


Fear No More : T-20

by StudioRat



Series: Branches and Fate [4]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Canon Related, Children, Family, Fantasy Racism, Gen, Goat Farm, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Memories, Military Backstory, Tragedy, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-28 10:52:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 45,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6326116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StudioRat/pseuds/StudioRat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The right thing - What is it? I wonder. If you do the right thing, does it really make everybody happy?</p><p>-</p><p>Setting:<br/>After and sideways of Majora. Link found a shard of a timeshift stone, and with that and the Ocarina and a lot of For Science!, has done Time Stuff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A smol and a tall...

A soaking sort of rain slanted steady and somber from the lowering gray skies as the soldier tied his horse in front of the rambling little house. He stood by her side in the rain for a long time, broad shoulders hunched forward, staring at his boots like he'd never seen them before.

The horse tossed her head, listening to something too quiet for anyone else to notice, and sidled just enough to jostle her shoulder against her master. He patted her neck without looking up, and trudged toward the house.

His spurs chimed as he strode across the deep porch, the only thing bright about him. He neither pushed back his hood nor made any attempt to shake the wet from his long cloak. Lights moved on the other side of the curtained windows, and the soldier halted on the far side of the braided entry rug as if he couldn't bear even so little softness. Accordingly, when he raised his fist to knock, he couldn't reach the door to do it.

It didn't matter. The door opened three breaths later anyway.

"I need to buy a goat," said the soldier.

The square-faced man in the doorway squinted at the soldier on his porch. "Suppose I could spare you a few yards of smoked sausages if that'll do."

The soldier held his cloak closed over his chest with one hand as he offered the man a heavy purse with the other. "The whole goat. I can pay."

The square-faced man worked his jaw, looking past the soldier to his horse.  
"This is no kind of weather for any living creature to be traveling in."

"Please," said the soldier. "We have a long way to go."

A woman round as the man was square put her hand on his shoulder, guiding him through the door so she could take his place framed by light in the middle of it.

"We," she said.

The soldier said nothing, offering the purse again.

The man folded his arms across his chest. "You're full young to be traveling alone with such a hard look."

"I'm nineteen," returned the soldier with an air of long suffering.

"Of course you are," said the woman, leaving no doubt of her conviction otherwise. "Didn't your mother ever teach you to stand up straight?"

The soldier frowned, taking a step back. "My mother never taught me anything. She died, running from the war, when I was a babe. _Now_ can I buy the goat?"

The man raised one shaggy brow. "Your father?"

"Probably a soldier-"

A muffled squeak and grumble from under his cloak interrupted him.

The woman crossed the bright rug and laid her hands fearlessly over the soldier's right, unwinding his fist from the sodden wool and lifting the edge of his cloak as the squeak grew into a full-throated howl. The soldier's wide blue eyes darted between her and the man, his mouth opening and closing, but no words came out.

"We," she said again.

"Sins of the father," murmured the man. "Well, I have no mind to haggle in the rain. You'll just have to come in and wait it out."

"I can't-" began the soldier, as his burden screamed in fury.

"You must," said the woman, unfastening his cloak for him and handing it to the man. "Your child is barely born, and you've risked their life terribly already riding this hard. My son can learn to share while Corfo beats some sense into you."

The soldier scrubbed his free hand over his face, combing back his shaggy hair, and tried again to give his money to either one of them. The woman snorted at him and took the purse at last, mostly to get it out of her way, giving that to Corfo also.

"Ensren my boy - get your boots on and come fetch this horse out of the rain," said Corfo.

The only answer was a whoop of victory from inside the house.

"Look at that beautiful child," said the woman as the soldier reluctantly unwound the improvised sling holding the screaming infant to his chest. "Red hair from their mother no doubt - here, little one, let go of him, he hasn't what you want. Come to Idrea - yes, that's right - oof but aren't you heavy for such a tiny thing?"

The soldier stared helplessly as Idrea took the furious child in her arms and disappeared into the house. The screaming subsided not long after, leaving only the patter of rain on the wooden shingles as the two men on the porch studied each other.

The whipcord thin soldier wore plain boots and breeches, and an oversized coat of good steel ringmail decorated with two wide stripes of brass-plated rings at the edge. He wore a sleeveless blue tunic over it, darker where the insignia had been cut away, and stained darker still where it was torn at the right hip.

Corfo looked his foil in every way, cheerful in loose trousers dyed a deep mustard gold to match his long cobalt blue vest embroidered with every kind of leaf in onion-gold. His white linen shirt boasted more fine embroidery of blue flowers with gold hearts and red stamen, scattered over heavy smocking done with green thread exactly matching the wide sash tied over the whole.

A boy of nine in a plainer version of the same clomped out of the house wearing boots many sizes too large. The sight of him roused the soldier from whatever thoughts had swallowed his attention, and he moved to intercept the boy.

"No - I'll do it myself," he said.

"But Da said-"

"I'm already wet," said the soldier with a shrug. "Anyways it's better you don't. It's not safe."

Corfo stopped him going back into the rain with a hand on his shoulder. "You'll catch your own death staying out in this much longer. Ensren is a good boy, he'll do fine. He needs the experience."

"I won't let her boss me, sir. I take care of Molly and Jack all the time," said Ensren.

"It's not just her," said the soldier with a note of rising panic. "I have… she's carrying things-"

"I'll be careful," said Ensren.

"It's not about careful," said the soldier.

Corfo shook his head. "He's a good boy. Let him help - seems to me you need relieved of whatever you're carrying as much as she does. Your things will locked with the tools until you're in better order."

The soldier sighed in defeat as Ensren snapped him a cheerful salute. Both men watched the boy go, leading the tired destrier to the barn with no trouble whatever. Once he was out of sight, Corfo turned his guest to face him, his voice soft as down and hard as stone.

"Strip down out here, and we'll pack your armor under last year's potatoes. The uniform goes into the fire, and you signed on with your girl at planting time, you understand?"

The soldier blinked at him, baffled. "I didn't do anything bad."

Corfo sighed. "You did what you had to. But now you're going to do what I tell you, son. Your girl left in the night, just after she was brought to bed of your son. His name's Roan. You don't know where she went. You don't know anything, you worked for my cousin Ibas Bensho in Vosterkun for ten years before you came here, you left after harvest last and came straight here on account of you were tired of half the year snow."

"But Roan is your- I mean, that's not his-"

Corfo shook his head. "Your son is Roan until I tell you he isn't. Red-hair is Idrea's folly and I love her too much to raise a fuss, you hear? The babes are within a few days of each other if I'm any judge, and no one has been out this way in months but the midwife and the Beedle. I'll send Ensren with a gift for the midwife tomorrow. Been meaning to clear out some of that sour fig jelly anyway."

The soldier stared. "But you lo- er. Figs are expensive."

Corfo shrugged. "We'll live. Now strip down, and I'll fetch you something from Idrea's mending basket. Suppose you can keep the boots, but leave them out here and take the spurs off. You got a name, boy?"

"Link," said the soldier, unlacing his doomed tunic.

Corfo rolled the name over his tongue, considering. "Too foreign. Voh, short for Vohatyr, from Kharazhin."

"Voh," said Link. "What's it mean?"

Corfo grinned, helping him wriggle free of the heavy maile. "Just a little joke. I'll be back by the time you're out of the rest."

They joined Idrea by the hearth long before Ensren finished with his task, and Corfo poured them each a mug of something richly amber from a clay jug he kept on the highest shelf. Idrea smiled at them, content in a nest of blankets in the deep settle, a babe in each arm and a little girl asleep with her head pillowed on her mother's knee.

"What's his name," she murmured, cheeks flushed and eyes bright.

Link sniffed the contents of the mug instead of answering. "What is this?"

"It'll warm you. Made from apples."

Idrea and Corfo shared a speaking look as Link coughed and swore.

"Well," Corfo drawled. "Mostly apples."

Link made a face at his mug, and muttered a string of foreign words that might have been an answer or a curse.

Idrea shook her head. "We can't just call him baby, Voh."

"Rajo then," he said at last, and lifted the mug for another, more cautious pull. "It means hope."


	2. Chapter 2

A gentle breeze eased the heat of another glorious summer morning, bright and buzzing with exuberant life. Link whistled low for the hens as he levered another stone from the dirt. The queen understood his call, launching into her ridiculous wobbling run at once. Her subjects raced to follow as Link hefted the rock onto his shoulder and endeavored to think of nothing more than the work, stepping easily over the taut strings pinned across the ground.

He’d forgotten how broken the terrain of the south enclosure had begun, but he remembered every inch of Idrea’s beloved potager garden against the east side of the house. The five-pace-wide, wattle-fenced make-do plot sheltering between the henyard and the kitchen door barely produced enough for their table during the season, and nothing for trade. Not yet.

This, he could fix.

Between the goats and the fields and the orchard climbing the north hills, Corfo and Idrea had enough work to keep four people busy. Ensren did well enough with the small chores, feeding the animals and rotating them from one small enclosure to another, but it would be a few years yet before he would have the strength to help expand the farm. Lamis was too little to help with much of anything yet, and they couldn’t afford to hire anyone.

The hard men in local lord’s livery tried to make trouble about that when they came to the farm two days after the rainstorm. Link kept his head down and his mouth shut until they left, throwing all his strength into what simple labor he could manage without direction. Which wasn’t much - turning the compost and mucking out paddocks and splitting another cord of wood into smaller pieces for the stove and oven - but dirty enough to keep the men from looking too closely. What he’d overheard still made him angry.

Link set the stone next to its place, scraping away the dirt to level it with its neighbor. He was nearly done with the first course already, and all four corners of the new enclosure dug. Corfo didn’t have enough seasoned lumber ready to finish the whole thing as post-and-rail, not and still be able to raise the garden poles as they ought to be, but the middle of the fence could be finished with greenwood and coppice and still serve until the horseapple thickets grew in. The hedges would be easier for Idrea to maintain with them closer to the house anyway.

Link rocked the stone into place, and crossed the yard to dig up another. Hours rolled by, and eventually the hens lost interest in scavenging from his work, settling in for a nap on the porch railing. Ensren and Lamis ran past more than once, busy on little errands, and Link was glad he’d taken the time to drag the posts over to cover the holes. He couldn’t set them alone, but at least he could keep the children from falling in until Corfo had time to help finish the work.

He’d promised to take them berry-picking the day after tomorrow, so both were afire to get ahead in their little chores and get to spend the whole day on adventure. Ensren, of course, would be helping him dig up thornberry roots to bring back, but he didn’t know that part yet.

“Big project,” said Corfo, ambling up towards the house through the labyrinth of stones and holes and posts.

“No bigger than yesterday,” said Link, tamping the next stone into its seat. “Should be ready to set these poles tomorrow eve or so, if the road crew can spare you early.”

Corfo frowned at the undulating patterns of the stone, turning in place where one day Idrea’s blue milkweed would flourish. “And then?”

“Then the fence corners,” he said, avoiding Corfo’s eye as he stood. “Before bad things happen.”

Corfo nodded, stepping over the lines of rocks. “Glad you’ve come to see reason.”

Link shook his head. “We’re still not staying. Just until Beedle day next, time enough for him to bring the nets and pipes I ordered.”

“You’ll break her heart,” said Corfo.

Link set his jaw and turned heel. Corfo followed a few steps behind, and bent to help him pull the next rock out of the newest post-hole. Well he did, for it was larger than the last two put together, and they carried it between them to its new home. Once set, Corfo steered him away from the work with that look which would hear no argument at all.

“You can’t raise a child rootless,” he said. “Not this young. You said yourself the mother’s family wouldn’t know you from a hole in the ground - and we could use your strength here.”

Link shook his head. “I’ve brought you enough trouble already.”

“That’s our place to decide,” said Corfo. “Tell me about this wild design of yours, Voh. It's surely not my business if you want to harvest rocks in your free hours, but I'd like to be able to tell Idrea why you dug up half her onions and all her leeks."

Link ducked his head, pointing to the arced bed where he'd already laid them in their new - temporarily shallow -trenches. "I was careful. They'll do better over there anyway. And it's not my design. I've just done it before."

Corfo nodded in the way he did when he didn't understand at all. "You'll have to weave a new little fence for them then - and soon. I'll show you how it's done after lunch."

"I remember how," Link said, avoiding his skeptical look. "But I'll be sleeping on the porch another fortnight to guard it, and after that they won't need their own fence. You'll see."

"You didn't learn this kind of magic in the army," said Corfo, studying the beginnings of Idrea's garden. "Small wonder you couldn't bear the life."

"It's not magic. Or at least - I don't think he used any magic," said Link, frowning at the memory. "I'll need to borrow the mules and cart for berrying day. And again after the poles are up, of course. Don't know how many trips it will take this time."

Corfo steered him toward the house. "For?"

"You'll see," said Link. "Idrea's preserves will be famous someday."

"Don't tell her that," Corfo laughed, holding the door for him. "She'll be up all night inventing a worthy recipe."

 

 

**\- o - O - o -**

 

 

Berrying day dawned clear and sweet, bringing with it a dry west wind. Link yearned for a pot of good strong tea to clear the cobwebs of another sleepless night, but he didn't want to wake the house. So instead he crept down to the barn and spent the first hours of morning carefully picking every lock on every tool chest in search of his things.

He found most of the tack, and all of the gold enameled snake jewelry with its vivid green garnets. The spindle and the wool. The rest of the stash of rupees and the priceless books of legends, his writing case and the mostly-empty notebook bound in green-brown leather.

No sword.

And no masks.

Link sat with his adopted horse a long time, or at least an hour, fighting down the panic and fury. He expected Corfo would come out eventually to help get the cart ready - but it was Idrea who let herself into the loosebox and pulled him to his feet.

"Don't be angry with him," she said. "I'm the one who moved your things."

"You don't understand. I need-"

"Voh," she said, brushing his hair out of his eyes. "A simple farmhand wouldn't know how to draw a sword without dropping it on your foot. Can't you just _imagine_ what a patrol would say to see you wearing one?"

"Oh," said Link, as the shame burned his face. "You still shouldn't have - it's too dangerous. What if Ensrie or Lamis-"

"You can talk to me about dangerous on the day you let yourself grieve. Rajo's not the only one we worry about," she said, straightening his patched tunic. "And the day I can't keep a secret from my own children when I choose to is the day I join the ancestors."

Link tried to answer, but his words wouldn't work, and he couldn't sort out what to do with his hands.

Idrea clicked her tongue at him and folded him into her arms, and everyone else believed her later when she said the damp spot on her shoulder was the mare's mischief.

 

 

**\- o - O - o -**

 

 

Ensren and Lamis raced each other to to feed the goats and let the chickens free, and still fidgeted like bombachu all through breakfast. When Corfo brought the cart up to the house at last, Link helped Idrea pack the leftovers into a second provisions basket for the grand adventure. Ensren brought all the flat berry crates down from the attic, and Lamis carried blankets and cushions to build a nest in the back to travel in. The tool racks on the side of the cart proved to be empty though - Corfo stopped him when he would have gone to fetch the shovel and mattock, taking him to the root cellar for a crate of seed potatoes and a jar of rare spice instead.

Corfo laughed at his expression. "You look like someone just told you to carry water in a basket."

"It was supposed to be a surprise, for both of you. I need the shovel because I mean to bring Idrea not just thornberries, but her own thicket."

Corfo grinned, cutting a narrow core from one shriveled potato. "I know. I solved your puzzle yesterday. After we had the poles up and you started on the lattice, well."

Link sighed. "So why can't I do this for you? Why won't you let me repay-"

Corfo shook his head, and drew his folded handkerchief from a pocket. He laid it out on top of the crate in the dim cellar, unfolding the pale cloth to reveal a little briarflower branch with three sets of five red-kissed leaves. He dipped the cut end of the branch in the jar of spice, and gently wriggled it into the core of the potato.

Link stared at him, and the incomprehensible branch-potato.

Corfo laughed, handing him the little knife in its embroidered sheath. "There's more than one kind of magic in this world, Voh."

 

 

**\- o - O - o -**

 

 

Beedle day came a tenday late, on the heels of the autumn storm Link had hoped to avoid. The garden still looked like nothing much, but the south enclosure, at least, made sense to everyone. He worked when he could, and at the end of the day when he couldn't sleep, he carved scrap wood into clumsy owl statues with shattered green rupee eyes.

When Idrea made him stay inside, he taught Lamis to spin, and played nonsense games with Roan.

Rajo watched everything, and babbled at everyone. Generally he was no more difficult than Roan, or any other child of three months, except when he made abundantly clear he wanted Link's attention above all, and didn't get it.

No one said anything to Link about it. They didn't have to.

He didn't say anything about it either - whatever story they told themselves would be kinder than any lie he could invent.

Yet it dragged on him as he led the mule cart to the verge of the road to meet the Beedle. Not just for the nets that would help guard Idrea's garden, but to escort her and her beloved children to have their own share of the minor holiday. Corfo met them at the fence, Beedle in tow, and they wasted over an hour on idle nothings before Idrea declared the Beedle must join them for lunch as an honored guest.

The Beedle looked to Corfo, and drew a great breath, summoning more courage than Link thought the man had ever possessed in his whole life to that moment.

"I cannot trespass on your hospitality, my friends, for I love you too well. The warmth with which you embrace stray lambs is surely the blessing of Nayru on your house-" he trailed off, frowning at Link with undisguised suspicion.

"Farore no less," said Corfo, lightly. "You see yourself how life flourishes here - there is always room at our table for you, old friend. Let your fillies rest a while, and tell us news of Hyrule."

The Beedle swallowed hard, looking only at Link. "Din forbid I should pour darkness into a place of light."

 

 

**\- o - O - o -**

 

 

Corfo caught up to him just before he reached the barn. He didn't speak, but drew Link into his arms and held him like that, in the middle of the muddy yard, silent and steady as an oak.

Link didn't cry, but shook with rage. He'd wanted to hurt that man so badly for insulting his family. For his judgements no less pointed for all he delivered them in silence and hints. He didn't understand. The same man who never once questioned the goodness of a 'half Kokiri' boy and his 'half Gerudo brother' - assumed villainy when faced with a rootless deserter and his 'bastard child'.

As if he could ever hurt them! Rajo had to eat - and he'd thought in this body he would be able to persuade them to sell a nanny goat. He would leave as soon as the garden was ready. The garden in its final, crowning design might start to make up for the strain on their stores over the summer, though nothing could repay their other gifts. Even less could he atone for the harm he'd done last time - but at least they knew nothing of it and never would.

As long as nothing disturbed the seal on the ruined shrine.

"We can't stay," he said at last.

Corfo nodded, but made no move whatever to let him go. "Your business here goes through harvest, and though I won't let you in a furlong of a scythe, you can follow behind us while Ensren watches the littles and free Idrea to work hers. I'll sell you a goat then, if there's one still giving milk."

Link cursed, but even silken Geldo profanity didn't lift the stone from his chest. Corfo _would_ remind him he'd planted half again as much grain as last year. He'd never be able to get it all in alone.

"I'll thank you not to teach the children what any of that means."

Link nodded, and Corfo let him go. He didn't look even remotely embarrassed, or angry, or anxious. Just - patient.

They met the Beedle wagon as it trundled up the hill to the little house, Idrea with Rajo in her lap on the driver's box next to the Beedle, with Roan in his. Both boys crowed and babbled as Corfo and Link walked beside.

"I need to buy a chest," said Link when there was a moment of quiet.

The Beedle nodded. "You'll want the sort that's bigger on the outside no doubt. I'll have to go to the city for that, or there wouldn't be much point."

"So?" Link scowled, and tried not to think about punching him.

"So that means spring, young Vohatyr," the Beedle said. "Maybe in time for blossoming. You won't mind if it's not precisely new, I hope?"

"I ordered bottles," said Idrea over Rajo's noise. "He's only got so much room in the wagon. If he could pack my bottles inside-"

Link kicked a pebble, perversely pleased when it scattered the hens lurking nearby. "Also a book of stories then. With pictures. _Nice_ ones."

"Voh," Corfo began.

"I have something I need to take care of," said Link, meeting Rajo's intense golden eyes. "I'll need my horse, and my things. I'll be gone a fortnight."

Corfo waited until Idrea swept into the house in furious temper matched only by the indignant rage of the babe she carried. "And if it's longer?"

"Hope," he said.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T-18

The trouble with the big settle by the hearth stove was that it was deep enough for plenty of cushions. Also, it was warm, and the whisper of the fire blurred the noise of the house, even to the chaos of solstice feast preparations. Link knew better than to sit down without something to keep his hands busy, but he thought reading to Lamis would be enough - and help keep her out of the kitchen. 

The little ones were _supposed_ to be napping while Corfo and Ensren took the cart around the neighboring farms. 

He woke to a weight on his chest and a damp and ticklish sensation on his cheek. He froze, afraid to open his eyes to horror, and heard Roan giggling somewhere behind him. Someone was pulling his hair. Which felt somehow damp. 

He smelled paste and black walnut. 

Link cracked one eye open as the tickle along his cheek lifted, and found himself looking up into Rajo's bright eyes. He was sitting on Link's chest, inkpot balanced precariously between his knees. He frowned ferociously, sticking his tongue out in concentration as he dipped the brush and reached to add another fiendish squiggle to his work.

Link waited until Rajo was committed to the brushstroke to move, trying to pretend he was just shifting in his sleep. Roan noticed before he could grab the inkpot, shrieking in glee and alarm. Rajo's eyes pinned in panic, and he scrambled to escape, brush still clutched in his small fist. The ink splashed everywhere as it fell to the floor, and Link rolled off the settle still half-tangled in blankets. 

He caught his reflection in the stove-glass and swore. Rajo whooped victory as he raced after Roan - a metallic crash from the kitchen betrayed their direction. Link scrambled to his feet to give chase - Idrea should have been in there - she would be furious if they ruined the feast.

Roan pelted him with nuts as he skidded around the dining table, hollering about wolves. Idrea bundled through the garden door as Rajo overset the vegetable baskets in his mad scramble through the kitchen. Her laughter belied her indignant protest.

"Rajenaya stop that _right now!_ " Link roared as Rajo snatched the slops bin from under the enormous sink. 

Rajo stuck his tongue out, and upended the whole thing across the kitchen floor as Idrea howled in helpless laughter, sagging against the door with a stack of honey frames in her arms. 

"Evil child," he muttered, as Rajo escaped out the garden door by way of scrambling under Idrea's skirts.

 

 

**\- o - O - o -**

 

 

A gentle snow started falling as Link chased his ancient enemy through the winter twilight. They tore across garden and farmyard, scrambling through mud and slush. Rajo slipped through fences Link was obliged to vault, leveraging every advantage of his boundless energy and devious mind to evade his opponent. 

Only when his horse screamed in surprise at the tiny, fearless invader in her paddock did Link realize the boy didn't have shoes. He stumbled through a half-frozen puddle as Rajo slipped through the opposite fence and pelted off toward the house again. 

Barefoot.  
In nothing but his long holiday tunic. 

How long had they been outside? An hour? Link was winded and chilled through - soaked in spite of good boots and heavy woolens. How much worse for his tiny, desert-born charge?

Link climbed back over the fence, heart pounding. If the boy had any sense of self preservation he'd go in the house at once. 

So _of course_ he veered for the henyard instead.

Link sprinted after him, only to find Rajo had jammed the lock somehow. He ignored Link's demands, scrambling through the clutter of roost bars and diversions and open air nest boxes to the hen's ladder.

Link tore the door from its frame in his desperate fury, destroying the brass hinges beyond repair. The hens scolded him, milling under his feet as he crashed after the boy. He broke the main ramp into the coop as he grabbed at Rajo's bright tunic. 

Rajo screamed in rage and leapt from the ladder, breaking Link's tenuous grip. The foulest of curses fell from his lips as he lunged after the boy, a torrent of insults he neither heard then nor remembered after. At last, he wound his fist around one delicate, filthy ankle as its owner tried to escape into the dark coop.

Rajo screamed defiance, dropping the brush at last and clawing at the disgusting floor as Link hauled him back into the open.

Link growled, carrying his wailing, thrashing charge upside down as he stomped back across the henyard

"NO! Jojo GOOD! No - leggo! _No more monster._ No eat Jojo," Rajo howled.

"Good? You? _Never,_ " Link growled, kicking the ruined door mostly back over its frame.

"Nonono," babbled Rajo. "Be good be good - no eating Jojo - Jojo taste bad! Leggo leggo, no tell, our secret! No mad. Secret! Be good be good."

Link froze, the shape of Rajo's terror lancing through his heart. He'd been careful to hide the mask always - he'd only used it twice this time, and Rajo couldn't possibly remember his birth. How did he know? He locked his room in the barnloft when he slept, and he avoided holding Rajo whenever possible, in case his magic was instinctive. Where else could he have gotten such a horrible idea? 

A hammer blow of memory - Roan throwing nuts to slow the wolf so Jojo could run away.

The shape of the smeared ink on his face in the stove-glass, no longer a mindless scribble, but a wobbly protection charm copied from Rajo's favorite storybook.

Link sank to his knees in the mud and snow, wrapping the struggling Rajo in his arms. Rajo buried his face in Link's sodden tunic, and sobbed until he gave himself hiccups. 

"It's ok," he said, over and over, smoothing down wild red curls.

Eventually, Idrea came out to scold them both for risking frostbite playing outside in such weather, exclaiming over their icy hands and the state of their clothes. Which were pretty awful, both of them smeared with paste and ink and mud and cucco castings and tears and snot. She stole Rajo away for a bath in the sink, and shooed Link to the barn to rinse himself and fetch fresh clothing.

 

 

**\- o - O - o -**

 

 

Link climbed the steep and narrow stairs to his room barefoot and shirtless, cursing himself and the weather and the cruelty of gods. His madder-red tunic was probably ruined, and he wasn't sure if he'd ever get all the paste out of his hair, but at least it wasn't a cockscomb anymore. He'd scrubbed his boots, but they were soaked and he wasn't looking forward to having to put them back on for the return trip to the house.

Wrapped in regrets, he'd dug his key out of his pocket and fit it to the lock before he realized the door wasn't even latched. Heart in his throat, he eased the door open, bracing for a fight.

"You're not from Vosterkun," said Ensren, without lifting his dark head. He calmly turned another page in the Book of the King, though surely he couldn't read it. 

But he could read Link's notes. Which were also open in his lap. The Book of Sands lay on the floor next to him, and the books of magic, and all of Gan's old notebooks. The laundry basket and brightly wrapped parcel on his table explained Ensren's initial trespass - all of the clothing from his trunk had been emptied into his cot, and the false bottom leaned against the far wall. 

Link shut the door. "No," he said.

Ensren nodded, turning pages. "Are you really a soldier, or just a thief?"

"You were supposed to be with Corfo today," Link said, dropping heavily into the wooden chair. In close quarters he could smell his own stink too well, and without his tiny stove going, his room was barely warmer than the rest of the barn.

"Did you steal these when you stole Jojo?" Ensren raised his hazel eyes, as deep and deceptively calm as a forest pond.

"No," said Link, scrubbing a hand over his face.

"Are the masks from the desert too?"

"No. You shouldn't have touched them. They're dangerous, Ensrie."

"I was careful," said Ensren, closing both books and adding them to the stack of magic books without looking.

"It's not about careful," said Link. "All magic is dangerous. But people will get hurt if the bad magic isn't stopped."

"Is that why you stole Jojo? To save Jojo from the bad magic?"

Link propped his elbows on his knees and hid his face in his hands, trying to calm the pounding of his heart. "I was a hero, once," he said. "Long ago tomorrow, in a hard time."

The floorboards creaked as Ensren unfolded himself from the floor. "What are you now, Vohatyr?"

Link couldn't find an answer.

Ensren padded across the room and laid his hand on Link's shoulder exactly as his father did when Link was locked in his own head. "Who did the books belong to? Our secret."

The words cracked on his tongue. "My brother," he said.

 

 

**\- o - O - o -**

 

 

The chaos of merrymaking filled the little house, fragrant with evergreen bundles over every door and the table crowded with feast and family. Link helped Idrea carry the platters of glazed duck, new boots clicking brightly across the slate floor. 

Rajo crawled into his lap the moment he sat down, all traces of his misadventure washed away, fear forgotten. Link held him steady so he could reach to trace his tiny brown fingers along the onion-gold embroidery on Link's new holiday vest of deep indigo wool. The pattern of thornberry vines and potato leaves stretched from collar to hem, their color echoed in the lattice pattern of his wide blue-and-gold sash, a quiet reflection of their resounding success breeding tame thornberries behind wattle-fence and fishing nets.

Ten years early and four times as grand, for grafting Gan's brilliance with Corfo's wisdom.

Link held his mug out for cider as Corfo circled the table, not at all surprised when he tipped more than a little applejack into it too. No doubt Idrea had told him the whole story, and he _did_ still have ink on his face, to Roan's effervescent glee.

Idrea covered her mug when Corfo moved to give her the same, and a radiant sort of silence bloomed between them. 

"Taedra," Link murmured, though no one heard him.

Rajo used his distraction to steal a sip from his mug, laughing and unrepentant when Link took it away again. He squealed with glee as Link lifted him onto his shoulders and stood, urging him to play pony, 'like Da'.

Link cleared his throat, and Lamis drummed her fists on the table when that wasn't enough to get her parents' attention.

Five sets of wide eyes pinned him in place as he laid out his proposal for an addition along the north side of the rambling house. Heavy timber framing and wide clerestory windows, tile roof and separate rooms for each of the children. He explained how the kiln against the outside wall would heat the fancy tiled bath, and how the neighbors and townsfolk would buy the extra tiles Lamis would paint. He told them about the one-eyed beggar in town who used to be a soldier, who would help work the fields for a jar of applejack on quarterdays and a bed in the barn, and the merchant's wife who would pay red rupees for someone to watch her mother twice a week. Roan interrupted constantly, and Rajo refused to be outdone, but when he was done, Corfo raised his own mug for a toast to the great architect under their roof.

"It's not my design," he said, embarrassed.

"Yes it is," said Ensren, staring right at him. "I saw - he's got _hundreds_ of drawings, buildings and locks and cities and towers and a waterwheel-"

"The works of kings. Our great good fortune then," said Corfo. "That the first fruits should flower on our land."

"It's different thinking it and doing it," Link mumbled. "I might not be able-"

"Have a little hope, my son," said Idrea.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T - 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: minor edits 11.20 after it was pointed out that I forgot to mention where Roan was during all of this. My apologies.

Clouds of steam gathered under the rooftree, veiling the heavy timbers and softening the lanternlight. The air was redolent with the scent of wet wool, woodsmoke, and strong soap, the song of the little creek burbling along with the soft chirrups of these tamed woods. The improved siphon diverting water into the sectioned waxwood troughs worked beautifully, but better than that was the winch, lifting fully half the batch with just a few turns.

Link spun the netted fleece tight, wringing as much of the soapy water from the fibers as he dared, watching the cabled rope strain. He could have had the smith forge a chain for it - but he could only fit two fleeces in each trough as it was. Anyways, the runoff ponds were only designed to handle six batches of first wash and the sketch of proposed improvements was unfinished.

He let the net unwind, keeping it from jouncing with a light hand, and guided the hook over the next trough and its clean net. By heaping handfuls he tumbled the soapy fleece into the clear water, checking through for any sticky patches that might need extra attention. Whomper’s long gray curls sometimes tangled around the grease if the water cooled off too much. He only found a few handfuls to toss back, small enough he could massage the grease out and be able to put one more batch through after.

Link worked in sweaty silence, thinking of nothing but the work. A soft breeze picked up, dancing through the woven walls of the little washing shed, but it only stirred the heat together. Outside, perhaps, away from the stove heating the wash water and the soap cauldrons, that breeze would soothe - the walk back to the house might even dry his back enough to think of pulling his shirt back on.

Link laughed at himself as he stirred the cauldrons, dipping out a careful measure of grease and wax for the next batch of spindles. So many years spent on Death Mountain, in the dry heat of the plateaus, and wandering the endless sand sea, yet in this soft refuge a little iron stove made him long for a swim.

He dipped the crosspieces in the cooling unguent, and both ends of the jack, tilting it back and forth to coat the whole. He should have Lamis make him a shallow tray for this, but there was a soothing rhythm in keeping to this way. He rubbed the grease into the fine-grained wood, arranging the pieces on the wire mesh shelves, one after the other.

Eight spindles, and turn the wool. Turn out one soap log, fill a second. Slice the last log and lay the cakes out on the shelves. Dip out a fresh bowl, eight more spindles.

A lost firefly drifted through the walls, and he shooed it back out with his little fan. He frowned at the wall when a second and a third flitted through the walls. He chased them out the screen door this time, blinking at the deep twilight. Tomorrow would be solstice, so it was not the day running fast, but himself running slow. He shook his head, and let the counterweight close the door behind him. 

So many clever little things, pulleys and gears and ambitious constructions for the most mundane tasks. No one _needed_ a machine to close a door, but Ganondorf had designed one anyway. Whatever pattern he found in the world, he could not allow it to just _be_. 

Idrea would understand his tardiness - even if his stomach didn’t - no doubt she’d already set his dinner beside the ovens. There would be no washing tomorrow, so he couldn’t leave either trough to fester. He turned everything, cursing under his breath that neither fleece was ready. He smothered the fire, locking away the embers in the iron chest of woodash, and swept traces of sawdust into the opposite chest, locking both. Full dark descended long before he had the washing shed clean, and when he finally had the last fleeces spread on the drying frames, even the fireflies had gone to bed.

Owls scolded him as he wound his way back to the house. They’d left the barn lanterns burning, but one-eyed Zibo often stayed up to nadir or later in summer. 

Lanternlight spilled from every window of the little house, and even the garden lanterns still danced merrily against the night. Link stopped beside the henyard pump to sluice a little of the smell off, and pulled his shirt back over his head. The kitchen door opened, and Idrea peered into the darkness. 

“Ah - at last - Link. Did Ensren find you?”

He shook his head, frowning at her slip. “No - but I took the short path through the far paddock. I can go back-”

“Is Jojo with you?”

Link froze in the middle of retying his sash. “How long?” 

Idrea shook her head, wringing her hands as she descended the kitchen steps. “I've been tending Roan - stomach finally settled this evening. Lamis told me Rajo talked her into covering his chores just after breakfast. Swore he’d take your lunch today so she could get the kiln unpacked. We thought-"

“Zibo brought my lunch,” he said, turning in place, alert for the slightest movement in the shadows. “Are the ovens still going?” 

“Of course not,” said Idrea, frowning. “How can you even think of food-”

Link couldn’t hear the rest of her scolding over the pounding of his heart as he raced for the barn. He ran into Zibo just inside the door, sending them both sprawling. The poor man fell into a coughing fit from the impact, but he hadn’t found Rajo either.

Link climbed the stairs to his room three at a time, kicking the chest over as soon as he’d pried it open. He snatched the dusty leather satchel from the mess, and the plain sword from over the door. He vaulted over the railing, tumbling over his own feet as he ran to collect his horse. Zibo had the poor mare ready for him - how much time had they all wasted, convincing themselves their worries were unfounded? 

He ignored the shouting from the house, slapping the mare into a startled gallop as soon as they cleared the door. He sniffed the wind, guiding her away from the lights of the house, toward the desolate road. The scent seemed to faint to be from the south, but he could not thank fortune for that: when he crested the hill, he saw the glow to the west.

Link swore, turning back long enough to ring the watchbell at the farm gate. Light bloomed along the road as they pounded down it, and the shrill clarion at the town gates joined the chorus of frantic bells. Ash drifted into his face, and the choking scent of burning greenwood tried to smother him. The orange glow turned into a fog of roiling smoke turned into a ravening orange beast feasting on the verge. And still tongues of flame roared in the smog ahead, the dead and dying trees between rising black and jagged in the grayness. 

The mare refused to leave the road, rearing and dumping him from her back to flee home. He swore again, dragging a threadbare quilted tunic from his bag. He dumped everything else on the road to pull it on over his sweat-soaked shirt, popping seams. He buckled the baldric properly, and leapt over the sizzling embers into the burning woods.

He crashed through smouldering thickets and hacked burning branches from his path, shouting himself hoarse. No clear path lay before him in any direction - these woods were mostly tame, harvested and hunted often enough, but the distance between the blackened trunks left too much ready fuel for the blaze.

Heart in his throat, he searched for the center of the disaster anyway, stopping only to retch when he tripped over the corpse of an unlucky doe or to circle around a wall of active flame. He tumbled into a ravine he should have remembered to avoid, cracking his ribs in the fall.

Link sprawled in the ashy mud at the bottom, filthy, exhausted, coughing as the tears came. He cursed the rocks and the fire and the mud and the gods, pulling himself back to his aching feet. He crunched charred vines and thornbrush underfoot, hunting for a place to climb back out. Neither the mud nor the scree would support him long enough to push more than halfway up the steep slope. He trudged down the ravine, cursing his own failure, until he met a solid wall.

He coughed more ash out of his lungs at its foot, and turned around to climb the other way. A quarter of the way back, he stopped, staring at the charred nothingness around him. Fire was lazy, arrogant, and greedy. It spread up to easy prey, not down where it had to fight its own miasma. With fallen stones completely blocking the downslope, there was no easy path into the ravine. A fallen brand wouldn’t have consumed the damp growth down here so thoroughly. 

Link bellowed against the roar of the fires above, and charged back up the ravine. No voice answered, but he tore every charred snarl of vines from the ravine walls as he went, peering into every crevice he passed, however small.   

And at last, he found treasure.

Battered and unconscious, wedged into a fissure too small on this side to even reach an arm through. With desperate strength he hammered the pommel of his sword against the ravine wall, screaming for Rajo to wake up. He didn’t stir - and no more than a few handfuls of stone chipped free. 

Link dropped the sword and flung himself at the wall, using the mouth of the fissure for leverage to haul himself up. He scrambled and slipped and cursed his way to the blasted ash of the surface and scraped away wreckage and scree from the top of the treacherous fissure. A still-burning trunk had crashed down across the widest part, and he hooked his baldric around one of the shattered branches to heave against it. The moment it rocked clear, he stripped off the satchel and wriggled into the cramped space himself. 

He shouted, and he pushed himself further down the sharp narrowing slide. Rajo still didn’t answer - but he breathed. Link reached past the broken glass and caught Rajo’s small hand. He pulled, and he twisted to reach with his other hand, and thumblength by agonizing thumblength he pulled Rajo high enough to get the baldric around him. He heaved, and he strained, climbing crablike sideways and backwards up the treacherous, cramped slope.

Link dragged Rajo behind until the fissure opened enough to pull him across his own chest, and he could not remember being more glad to breathe bad air than when they reached the ground once more. He stripped off the tunic and wrapped that around his unconscious charge, ignoring the heat as he recovered his satchel. The blessed rain answered his song, and at last, Rajo stirred.

 

## \- o - O - o -

 

A wild, ragged cheer rose to greet them at the edge of the woods, as the summer storm argued with the ravening wildfire around him. Strangers dashed past the firebreaks to relieve him of his burden, and others tucked their shoulders under his to pull him faster into the clear air of the road. He stumbled, trying to tell them he had to go back for his sword. The strangers picked his feet clear of the ground and carried him to the waiting mule cart, where someone handed him a heavy mug. Parched, he drank it without question, and the one after it.

He tried to climb down from the cart, and fell. Strangers lifted him back in, and he heard Idrea’s voice as they took his boots and tied his hands to the rail of the cart. He couldn’t make out what she was saying, and he couldn’t find her among the sooty faces in the flickering lantern light. Someone gave him another mug, and he gave it back to them, demanding to know who had Rajo. They babbled at him, and handed the mug to someone else, who babbled louder, and everyone wanted him to drink. So he drank until he couldn’t hold another drop, and when he managed to pull free of the rope, someone’s fist tapped his ear, and he heard nothing else until afternoon.

 

## \- o - O - o -

 

He woke in a strange bed, too wide, and too soft, and too full of blankets. He glared at the light, but it didn’t go away. He threw the covers back, groaning at the deep-seated ache and the novel pain that seemed to have replaced his entire skull. A woman squeaked and giggled, and soft hands in the golden light wrapped him in a robe apparently made of stinging nettles. He swore, and squinted against the light, trying to make out the details of the room. 

“Voh,” said the shadow of Corfo in the door. “You did good, my boy. You did good.”

“Rajo,” rasped Link.

“Safe,” said Corfo, taking his outstretched hand in a painful grip. “Safe and well, and as full of sugar as we could manage so he’d let you sleep, may the gods preserve us all.” 

Link laughed, and followed him down the hall. The light wasn’t so bad away from the windows, and as they emerged he realized Idrea and Corfo had put him in their own bed. The parlor was quiet, little Taedra asleep on the rug and Roan intently rearranging his wooden soldiers along the windowsill. Ensren looked up from his carving, and held his finger over his lips, gesturing to the opposite settle with his little knife.

Rajo woke anyway, as soon as Link rested his weight against the polished wood frame. He blinked his golden eyes and scrubbed his little hand over his face. Clean, and bright with good health. Not one scrape or burn in evidence.

But he did not smile, smoothing his garish holiday tunic and rolling off the settle.

“Uncle Voh,” he said, and took a deep breath. “I - dropped the honeycomb.”

“It’s ok,” said Link, his eyes burning with fresh tears. For a sweet, he’d set the entire woods on fire, endangered six different farms bordering it, and frightened the whole family.

“No,” said Rajo, somber. “It isn’t at all. I also lost the fireflies. And the deku nuts. And the knife Ensren gave me last year, and your green book. Which _I_ stole, not Roan or Ensren.”

Link shook his head, unable to answer. A near apology, from the once and future king of all evil.

Rajo took another deep breath and said very quickly: “And the fairy got away.”

Link’s legs stopped holding him up. Ensren scrambled off the settle and Corfo offered his own hand up. Roan looked up from his games only briefly, sourfaced and sulky. Link shook his head, watching Rajo tuck his curls behind his ears and look brave.

“Fairy,” Link whispered at last.

“I’m not making it up,” he said defiantly, jutting his small jaw forward. “I saw a dozen of them, pink and blue and yellow and green and purple. I caught the best one - she was pink and she laughed like bells and her feet tickled. But she got away. When I fell.

“The bottle,” said Link, seeing the shattered green glass scattered in the fissure and caught in the dirty red curls.

“Yeah,” said Rajo, and he sighed, and looked away. “So I don’t have a present.”

Corfo reached out to ruffle Rajo’s hair. “You still have presents my boy - you’re the one who didn’t want to open-” 

“Not mine _Da_ ,” said Rajo, rolling his eyes. “Ensren said Uncle Voh doesn’t have birthdays, but that’s stupid. Everyone has birthdays, even if nobody ever told them when it was. So I decided he'll share mine.”

 

## \- o - O - o -

 

Link stood with Ensren watching the autumn sunset, exhausted from the mad scramble to get the hay in before the storm broke. Corfo joined them, bringing the jug of applejack to top off Link’s mug of it, and after a minute, tipped a little into Ensren’s cider also.

They drank in companionable silence for a while, until Ensren’s stomach roared. They laughed, and speculated how long before Idrea brought the pies to table. When they ran out of small things to say, Link drank off the rest of his mug, and set it with meticulous care on the porch railing.

“You’re leaving,” said Corfo.

“Yeah,” said Link, shamefaced. “We have to. Rajo-”

“Needs a teacher,” said Ensren. “He has a dangerous gift, but I’ve read there’s there’s wizards in the cities. Surely there’s got to be one who can help.”

“Or a priest,” murmurred Corfo. 

“He’s not _wicked_ , Da,” said Ensren with a stubbornness equal of his father. "He was _scared_. He didn’t know he’d found a feral colony, and grown men who know better will run like mad when they get a dozen stings in half a minute. From what he told me, the fire came later.”

“When he fell,” said Link, quietly.

“He told you that,” Corfo said, one shaggy brow lifted.

“No,” said Link. Rajo had refused to tell him anything more about what happened. But Ensren was a patient young man, and he loved his adopted brothers. “I just - you know he hates small places. He doesn’t even like hunting mushrooms.” 

Corfo nodded. “Ibas wrote me, said there’s peace talks in Hyrule. Royal Chancellor put out a general call for masons and carpenters. Nobody looks much close at plain builders. Beedle should be able to sell your armor in Termina or somewhere by now, and I’ll advance you a bit, to get you started. You can fetch the rest when you come next holiday."

"But I’m not a-”

“You built half this house,” said Ensren, implacable.

“But I didn’t design any of-”

“You did more than you credit,” said Corfo. “Anyways, plain builders just follow drawings, and you’ve four references beside me without even riding all the way to town that say you’re a fair hand at it.”

“Castletown,” said Ensren, decided. “It’s the first place I’d build - taller towers for the new cannon, and bigger walls. There might even be a real school, just for magic, that close to the royal family.” 

“No building in winter though,” said Corfo. “Might as well send an inquiry, and plan for spring.”

“You don’t understand how dangerous that is,” Link said to his boots.

  
“There's power in hope,” said Corfo.


	5. Chapter 5

The taut sailcloth shelter bloomed rose-gold with the crisp, quiet dawn. The wind relented hours ago, but Link still should have started the stove well before sunrise. Unfortunately Roan and Rajo had abandoned their shared cot again last night, laying in wait for sleep to claim him so they could drag their own blankets over and join him. Like enormous mischievous kittens both of them, quiet for the moment only because they sprawled without dignity in the warmest possible spot.

  
Link could not even shift an arm without waking one or both - and Rajo so rarely slept through the night now, he hated to interrupt his rest.

  
So he lay awake, watching the shifting colors shimmering across the frost-gilded sailcloth, trying vainly not to think. At last, he could wait no longer. Roan moaned in sleepy complaint as Link wriggled out from under them. Rajo - his golden eyes snapped open at once, and his small brown fist tightened in Link’s sweater reflexively. Link unwound his fingers from the thick wool, whispering the necessity to bargain his way free. Rajo released him, sitting up on the cot and winding the blankets around himself without remorse for uncovering Roan in the process.

  
And so another day on the frozen lake with the twin terrors began.

  
\- o - O - o -

  
Both boys caught a pair of walleye first thing that morning, though Rajo’s first one was too small to keep. Roan teased him about it, until he hooked a pike so big it snapped the line while they fought to bring it up. Link couldn't get the net under it fast enough, and he knew it would be at least an hour before they had a bite after that. He helped Rajo tie a new hook on, and once they had all three belled tip-ups rigged again, they skated back to their canvas shelter for breakfast. The little iron stove crackled with cheer, and the boys argued over whether more fish was better or bigger fish, whose fish would be the best tasting of all, and the best way to catch the big pike for good next time.

  
Tomorrow, Ensren would drive out to meet them with Molly and Jack. They’d caught more than enough fish in their barrel already for feasting, and some for smoking too. Not the best haul ever, but that wasn't the main reason they'd come.

  
Link shooed the boys back into their heavy woolens and out to check the lines, avoiding the thought. Corfo was right, of course. It would have to be said - but not yet. Let them have one more afternoon idyll.

  
They didn't catch much more the rest of the day, so Link folded out the work table and set up crates for the boys to stand on. He taught them how to gut and scale their fish while he rendered the result into fillets for the table and scraps for the garden and the hens. They finished processing their entire barrel by noon, and checked the lines again.

  
Link caught another walleye, and Roan a tiny perch they had to toss back. Something had broken Rajo’s line again, and he was furious at losing a fourth hook on a single trip. Link showed them both how the line had frayed when it snapped, reassuring Rajo that his knots had nothing to do with the loss.

  
This fact held no sway with him. “What good is a line that's weaker than a stupid knot? Why do we even use stuff so small and weak a stupid fish can break it?”

  
Link sighed, winding up what was left of the line. “It's important, to fool the fish. Anything bigger, stronger, or heavier would draw attention to itself, and we’d catch nothing at all.”

  
“Nets are heavier,” Rajo countered. “Why do we even use hooks and string? Why can't we just-”

  
“It's complicated,” said Link, handing the rod to Roan and collecting the tip-up. “Partly, to catch different fish - and partly, to only catch the fish you want to keep.”

  
Rajo scowled, kicking bits of ice into the hole in the frozen lake. “Well that's stupid. I will find a way to fool the fish with better string next time.”

  
Link shook his head, handing Rajo the fish basket. “This is just part of fishing. Sometimes you don't find the right place or time, or you don't have the right things. Fishing is being patient, and watchful, and always trying again.”

  
Rajo took the basket, muttering something about perfection under his breath.

  
“You’ll have time to practice,” said Link, collecting the pieces of the last tip-up frame. “The city is so close to the river we can walk there on rest days.”

  
Both boys stopped at once, throwing snow from their skates and nearly falling. “What city? Termina? When?”

  
“Termina doesn't have everything,” Link began, avoiding their eyes. “Hyrule Castletown.”

  
“We’re going to their _capital_ ,” Roan shrieked. “Oh _Da_ , thankyouthankyou _thank you_! Will we see soldiers? Of course we’ll see soldiers. But will we see them _lots_? Will we be close to the training grounds? The towers? Will we see cannon?”

  
Link winced. There simply wasn't a good way to open the subject, but he regretted seizing this one already. “No,” he said.

  
Rajo frowned. “Why not? Just because _you_ didn't like being a soldier-”

  
“Because,” said Link, cutting him off. Best to get through it quickly, and deal with the pain after. “War is not a game, and _Roan_ isn't going.”

  
Roan dropped the fishing rods, slack-jawed. “But you just said-”

  
“I'm sorry,” said Link, glancing between them. Rajo’s eyes already narrowed, his sharp jaw tight. Roan still looked stunned. “You’re needed here. Ensren is strong, but he can't add my chores and both of yours to his load all at once.”

  
“So tell Da to hire more people like Zibo,” said Rajo. “It's dumb that we have to do work anyway when town kids don't.”

  
“They have different chores, that's all. Most people won't work for trade, like Zibo and I do. Rupees are harder to come by out here, and Da Corfo needs those to pay the Beedle and the smiths and-”

  
“Then we should go get more rupees,” said Rajo, fist on his hip.

  
“We will,” said Link. “They are building new walls and towers in Hyrule, paying good wages for even foreign workmen -”

  
“Needing rupees is stupid,” said Rajo. “Everyone uses them for stuff and work anyway, why not just trade to begin with?”

  
“It's complicated,” said Link, scrubbing his forearm over his face. “Maybe next year, if Da Corfo says it's ok-”

  
“Who cares what Uncle Corfo thinks about anything,” said Roan, balling his mittened fists fiercely. “Why can't I go with you? Why do you care more about stupid I’m-so-tall Ensren than me? How can you _leave me_ , Da?”

  
“You won't be alone. You still have your whole family - a wonderful, peaceful life on your fa- on the farm. There are hundreds of thousands of people in the world who spend their whole lives wishing for the life you have.”

  
“But you’ll take _him_ ,” Roan spat, his face blotchy pink.

  
“I have to,” said Link.

  
“I hate you-” screamed Roan, his voice breaking as he repeated it again and again, salted with profanity no doubt gathered from Zibo, or the town soldiers, or both.

  
When Link stretched his hand out to quiet him, he pivoted and flung himself at Rajo, howling. Rajo dropped the fish basket to fight back, and they tumbled to the ice, flailing. Link hurried to unburden himself as they rolled and punched and bit each other fiercely. He knew separating them would be hard, but he’d been worried about violence from the wrong direction entirely.

  
Rajo broke away, and as soon as he had his feet under him, he raced away, deeper into the lake. Wildly, sliding on every turn, weaving in no useful direction at all, and Roan tore after him. Link couldn't anticipate where Rajo would skate next, so he could only follow them, and issue vain orders for both of them to stop.

  
Rajo landed hard on his side after a turn too swift, and crouched, waiting for Roan to get close before he sprinted back the way they’d come. Link veered to intercept him, but too late. Roan was faster than either of them, and a more skillful skater. He flung himself at Rajo and carried the fight back toward their abandoned fishing holes.

  
Link cursed them both, and Roan stripped off his mittens as his silver skates flashed wicked sharp across the ice. This time when he caught Rajo he hauled his sweater up over his head to blind him, and dragged him into a looping slide, heading directly for their first and largest fishing hole. He twisted, flinging a howling Rajo toward the dark water, soaking him to the waist.

  
Rajo clung grimly to the surface, even as the water filled his skates and tried to drag him deeper. Link shoved past the furious Roan, ignoring his shriek of betrayal, and hauled Rajo back onto solid ice at once. His teeth already chattered, but he regained his balance well enough, lifting his chin with pride and resolve.

  
Link looked down at sweet, mischievous Roan, who once loved his brother and best friend so fiercely, and could not find any words at all. Roan’s shrill venom gave way to angry tears, but what good was that, when he held murder in his heart?

  
Unbidden, a memory of Nabooru’s face, when she pushed through the smouldering scrub at the mouth of the grotto with three armed sisters beside her, as he wept over the blood of evil’s heir.

  
So he laid his hand on Rajo’s shoulder, and pointed to their distant shelter. Rajo nodded, and skated around Link’s far side to retrace their path. He even stopped to pick up the fishing poles and fallen basket.

  
Link shook his head, unable to find even the smallest words for the weight in his heart, and turned back. Roan would follow, or he wouldn't, and Link would deal with that after Rajo was safely in fresh clothing and settled by the stove.

  
He didn't hear Roan’s skates until he was picking up the pieces of all the tip-ups. Roan knelt to help, and Link ignored him.

  
“Da, I didn't mean - it was an accident-” Roan began, and Link heard echoes of other tragedies under his voice.

  
_Sorry doesn't make it unhappen._

  
Link stood, and took the last pieces from Roan in silence. Roan sniffled, and wiped snot from his nose with the back of his bare hand. He couldn't stay out in the cold much longer either.

  
They measured the rest of the distance in the same heavy silence, Roan gliding along behind him, empty handed and sniffling.

  
\- o - O - o -

  
Link poured three bright mugs full of tea, filling the tent with fragrant steam. The boys sat on opposite cots, one subdued and the other obstinate, both in their last set of fresh woolens, both silent. Neither thanked him for the tea, but Rajo gave his usual smirking sort of half-smile. Impossible to read.

  
Link sank down on the banded oak chest and wished for applejack in his mug. “The truth is, I didn't bring you both out here for the fishing. Ensren and I would catch more in half the time.”

  
Two pair of narrowed eyes fixed on him, and he took a sip of the tea. It burned his tongue, and it still didn't have any booze in it. “Long ago, in a hard time, people said I was a hero, because of the things I did. I believed in the old legends, and the spirits, and the Princess of Destiny. I… did bad things.”

  
“We know,” said Rajo, and Roan nodded agreement. “Da told us how you ran away from the war when we found your armor in the cellar.”

  
Link frowned. “You shouldn't go looking through other people’s things.”

  
Roan rolled his eyes. “We didn't steal it. We just looked. Looking doesn't hurt anyone. Anyway, why are we out here on the stupid lake, if it's not for stupid fish?"

  
“The thing is - you’re too young to understand _why_ we had to leave Hyrule,” said Link, sipping his tea while both boys fidgeted, eager for the grisly details. “But after what Rajo did this summer-”

  
“It was an accident-” grumbled Rajo.

  
“That’s not _fair_ ,” said Roan at the same time, fair face contorted with fury again. “He almost ruined everything for everyone and broke eleventy different rules, and _he_ gets to go to Castletown?”

  
“Roan,” said Link, staring him down.

  
Roan flinched.

  
“It's not a holiday,” said Link. “There are no teachers here for what he needs most to learn. Next time, our luck might be _bad_ luck. Next time, the _really_ bad magic might find him before I do.”

  
“I _said_ it won't happen again. I’ll be careful,” grumbled Rajo.

  
“It's not about careful,” said Link. “Your mother was… a witch, a powerful one. Bad things will happen for a lot of people if you don't have a good teacher.”

  
Rajo frowned, glancing at Roan, but said nothing.

  
“So he’s some kind of _special_ bastard. Fine,” said Roan, sulky and resentful. “It’s still not fair I can't go with you. Somebody has to take care of the house and chickens and everything while you build things for stupid foreigners for stupid rupees and he’s away with his stupid teacher.”

  
Link sighed, and braced himself for another outburst. “Your family needs you here, Roan. I’m not from Vosterkun, or even Snowpeak province, and neither are you. Vohatyr is just a name your father made up for me. My name is Link, and I was a - a kind of soldier, for Hyrule-”

  
“Hero,” said Rajo, in the voice he used when he was being stubborn. “That's what your name means, that Da gave you. It's not made up at all - it means _hero_ , for being brave, and good, and compassionate, even when the world is terrible.”

  
Roan sniffled, and looked miserable. “Why does _any_ of that have to matter? Why do I have to stay behind? How will I ever be a hero like you when all I ever do is feed goats and catch chickens?”

  
“Maybe when you're old enough for school, if Ma Idrea says it’s ok,” said Link, wincing. He had no right to even give Roan the idea, but he couldn't bear the devastation on his face.

  
“That's not fair either,” he muttered. “I'm a whole _month_ older.”

  
“Which is why you absolutely _can't_ come with us now,” said Link, hoping he would see reason. “It's important that stays secret so he can study _now_ , just like everybody keeps my secret when the hard men sweep for deserters. Nobody who didn't know better would think Rajo is only your age. He’s tall as Lamis already, and will be taller yet before the year goes around again. It will be hard enough for him, without the mischief both of you find under every rock.”

  
Roan sulked, and even Rajo looked almost subdued. Almost.

  
“We won't be gone forever,” he said, setting aside his mug. It wasn't what he wanted anyway. “We’ll be back next year, for the holiday, when nobody builds anything. If you’re good, and you faithfully help Ma and Da and Ensren and Lamis, and watch out for little Taedra, we’ll even bring you a special something from the city. Our secret.”

  
“No you won't,” said Roan to the floor. “You'll forget me and everybody, just like you always do when Rajo does things.”

  
“I never forget anyone,” said Link, holding out a hand to him. “I know it hurts - but you will both need to be strong now, and good and kind, and maybe in this time, everything will be ok in the end.”

  
Roan sighed, and tucked his hand into Link’s, letting himself be pulled into an awkward hug.

  
“I might write you letters,” said Rajo into the silence. “As long as you’re not stupid, I mean. I bet I’ll know all kinds of things weeks - maybe _months_ before your stupid country soldiers do.”

  
“Yeah? Well I might write back,” said Roan. “If you don't go all sap-brained and boring living in a big fancy city, I mean.”

  
Rajo snorted. “As if.”

  
Roan made a face at him, kicking off a battle absurd as each tried to outdo the other, which turned soon enough into a game of chase, with Link at the center. When they started leaping up on the cots in their circuit, Link captured both and threatened to throw them both in a snowbank until morning. They laughed, and promised most faithfully to be quiet.

  
_If_ he let them eat cookies for dinner.

  
So he joined them, feasting on sweets and cider, and to hell with the stomachache he’d have in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My research indicated that most ice fishing holes are going to be roughly 12" in diameter at most. So even saying one of the holes is clumsy and on the large side, it's not easy to fall all the way through. but one could get unpleasantly soaked, and a child could get wedged. Rather than a worst case scenario, I was envisioning this average sort of thing when I wrote the chapter.


	6. Chapter 6

Old wood creaked as the anemic morning light began to warm the city. The buzz of the market carried on the wind, even through the cracked shutters and mullioned glass windows. But at least it was muffled. A little. And though the floors were dusty and spiders wove in the corners and roof-beams, the little house was a hundred, a thousand times better than the bright and crowded squares or the desolate and filthy streets.

Hyrule was so rich that they left empty bottles in the street and half-eaten food in the gutters to rot.

Rajo eyed the worn switchback staircase, and paced across the empty room while Link folded back the shutters to brighten the dreary place. If he was generous, which he didn't much feel like, there might be twenty paces from neighbor to neighbor, and half again that from street to kitchen door. He folded the grooved double doors back carefully, wincing at the squealing of rusted brass.

“Well,” said Link.

“The kitchen is small,” said Rajo, trying to figure out how Hylians cooked anything in an oven barely larger than a kettle and a stove with only two plates. Ma Idrea would probably work magic with it anyway, once she got over the shock - and the scandal of having a bathing vat where a pantry ought to be.

“Easier to clean,” said Link, opening the flue and checking the stovepipe. He didn't quite hide his flinch of dismay at its condition - easier clearly wasn't easy enough for Hylians. “We’ll go to the market for feast days - there are whole shops here that bake nothing but fancy cakes. You’ll see - in the city you don't have to make everything yourself, because your neighbors all make different things.”

Rajo snorted, peering through the bubbly windows into the desolate little back garden. Mostly dirt and weeds, and one sad little oak sapling entirely overshadowed by the house itself. They would have to build a separate run for the chickens or the whole thing would be mud in a week.

“I can see towers - is that the castle?”

Link stopped trying to pry soot out of the pipe and joined him at the window. “Those - no, those are just watchtowers on the old wall. The castle is much further away. You can't really see it from this side of the city.”

“Good,” said Rajo, turning away from the cramped and ugly view. “So it will stay quiet here. How long until they bring the cart around with our things?”

Link shrugged. “Much of it is here already. I will go ask the landlord to bring the rest of what I sent ahead, and then we can go to market for our dinner. Unless you’d rather pick your room first?”

Rajo frowned, pacing the main room. He’d rather not have come at all. He already hated the way city people twisted their words and the way the houses crowded together on even twistier streets, and everywhere the winged crest of the royal house, watching.

Link stopped him with a gentle hand on his shoulder. “I know it’s hard, leaving home.”

“It's fine,” lied Rajo. “They weren’t really my family anyway.”

“Family isn't just blood,” said Link, dropping to one knee to meet his eye. “Ma Idrea loved you the moment she met you, same as all her other children. And Da Corfo no less. Never doubt that.”

Rajo bit back the retort on his tongue, swallowing the bitterness of the silence between them. He knew he should be grateful - for everything they’d all done for him, because of him - but even thinking about it made his stomach ache. He'd always known he didn't really belong - he was too different, in every way that mattered. But at least on the farm, everyone played pretend that he wasn't.

Except for his ‘uncle’, who rarely slept and never forgot.

“It's stupid that it has to be like this,” said Rajo, scowling at the desolate room. He couldn't quite decide whether the open shutters made the hateful place a little less awful or not.

“It's never stupid to learn,” said Link, with a sour apple smile. “Even when it's hard, even when it hurts, even if it's not what you wanted it to be, learning true things is good. Just don't forget you're nine now and-”

“Anjotyr, I know,” said Rajo. “Don't tell fairy stories, don't play in the mud even if it's the really good stuff, don’t play with littles, don’t forget to add three to whenever things were, don't show people worms and frogs. I won't forget.”

“Hey,” said Link, brushing his hand through Rajo’s hair. “It’s hard for me too. I like frogs. Maybe I should dig us a pond, and we can keep frogs instead of cuccos, and they will sing us lullabies.”

Rajo made a face. “But frogs don't lay eggs anyone would want to eat.”

Link grinned. “Fish like to. _Big_ fish. Why don't you look upstairs before we go, and pick which side of the landing you like best. Might be a good thing to know before we go to market.”

Rajo groaned, smoothing back the wisps Link had knocked loose. No one was going to take him seriously with his braid lopsided and messy. And he definitely needed different clothes. Rajo wasn't quite sure what he did need, only that these would no longer do. Anyone with eyes in their head must realize he wasn't even halfway grown up yet if he was always wearing Ensren’s old things.

“Which trunk has the hanging mirror in it? I need to fix something.”

“You look fine, Jojo.”

Rajo rolled his eyes, and pulled away to fetch the combs from his own satchel by the door. “Which is why I need the bigger mirror.”

Link sighed. “I know I don't have Ma Idrea’s skill at braiding, but if you try to be patient and let me practice-”

“Hylians don't wear their hair in braids anyway,” said Rajo, digging all the way to the bottom of the satchel for the small wool-wrapped hand mirror. Why did the important stuff always end up underneath everything else?

“Some do,” said Link.

“ _You_ don't,” said Rajo, bundling the bone combs and little mirror and curved fishknife together. “The boys in the marketplace all have short hair like you.”

“Only because it is easier,” said Link with a sigh. “Long ago, when I was little - you see, the people I lived with - in the before of the first-”

“It's fine,” said Rajo, even though it wasn't. He didn't like the way Link’s voice had changed or how his eyes pinned. “I’ll take care of it.”

“No,” said Link, still half-kneeling.

“No what?” said Rajo, stomping towards the stairs with the bundle in his fist. “It’s _my_ hair. I don't need _help_.”

“Please,” said Link, his voice harsh as if the wildfire was yesterday. “Let me fix it.”

Rajo rolled his eyes, squashing the weird pain when he imagined what Ma Idrea would say about that if she were here. He took extra care to make every single tread squeal as he stomped up to the second floor, refusing to even look back.

At the landing he found three doors, all partway open. The middle one across from the stairs shielded a tiny cubicle holding only a cistern-fed necessary and sink. The others boxed in the remaining sides of the square, one east, one west.

Rajo considered the advancing sliver of light from the former, and turned heel for the latter. On any normal day, Link rarely spoke to anyone before noon if he could avoid it - but he would be laboring with all the other masons and carpenters at dawn. Better still if they could buy a few cuccos anyway, and build a pen for them in Link's room to help him rise with morning.

The sooner he could get a chest full of fat rupees from the work boss, the sooner they could hire their own stupid sorcerer to fix the magic and they could leave.

Anyways, Rajo didn't mind the dark. Lessons would be on city hours anyway: he wouldn't even need to get out of bed until eleven.

Rajo stood on the threshold, baffled by the gentle gold shimmer filling the room. Great hulking shadowed chests sat in the middle of the floor, outlined in the luscious gold pouring from the window. Rajo circled the banded chests warily, curious how the light could even reach the west side so early.

“Maybe because it is upstairs,” Rajo told himself, squinting as he reached to touch the light. Nothing really magical at all, which was weirdly disappointing. Someone had collected enough yellow rupees together to set them in a delicate iron lattice so even the smallest ray would catch on the delicate facets and fill the whole room. Rajo turned his back to its beauty, determined to hate it as he already hated everything else about this wretched country.

But he couldn't resist peeking inside the chests. It wasn't as if they were locked - and he trying to find the large mirror anyway. Instead, he found heaps of tapestries and rugs in one, and much-flattened cushions in another. The largest two held mysterious sections of carved and shaped fragrant wood packed with bags of pegs and iron fittings. A smaller chest held fine blown glass vessels in strange shapes, all nestled in clean wool around a smooth ebony box of priceless lenses.

“Well,” said Link, leaning against the doorframe.

“This isn't from the farm,” said Rajo, closing the lid reluctantly.

Link shrugged.

Rajo waited, but Link’s cold blue eyes offered him nothing. Another question to stuff in the box in his mind where he kept all the other questions no one would ever answer. “How many days before lessons begin?”

“About a week,” said Link. “If you don't want any of it, you don't have to use it. We can buy different things.”

Rajo shrugged, snorting a little to cover the tightness in his throat. “No, I like them. I just wondered. It’s fine.”

Link gave him that sour apple smile again. “It's not, but it will be. We’ll fix it together this time.”

“Yeah,” said Rajo, wondering what he meant. Maybe he was angry Rajo didn't want his help with his hair, even though Link really was hopeless with it. “After the market. I'm hungry and I'm tired of soup.”

Link snorted. “Come on then - I think it is still early enough for the fried cake shop to have plenty of the spiral ones. You will like those.”

“And then a tailor,” said Rajo, pulling his braid down and smoothing everything into a simple looped queue he could hide under a hood. Hyrule felt colder than home, windy and wet. Plenty of Hylians wore hoods or hats anyway, and maybe people would stare less this way. “Ensren’s old clothes are still too big, and even if I let all the seams out on my tunics -”

“Just roll the cuffs - you’re growing again, and in half a year those will be too small if we cut them down now.”

Rajo rolled his eyes. “And then _no one_ will believe I'm nine, _Vohatyr._ ”

Link flinched, and stared at the floor for a long moment while Rajo checked for stray curls with the small mirror. “No black.”

“Gray. And maybe blue, like in the vest Ma made. Grownup colors.”

Link sucked a breath through his teeth and nodded. “Cake first.”

Rajo grinned. “Cake should always be first.”

 

\- o - O - o -

 

Evening improved the little row house, or at least Rajo’s opinion of it. He lingered in complete idleness in the steaming bathing vat in the far corner of the kitchen until his fingers were wrinkled as dried figs. He sometimes leaned out of the steamcloud to watch Link unpack their things or build what little furniture they would begin with, but Link never told him to hurry and be done, so he didn't.

He almost felt guilty for being so lazy, but none of the inns they stopped by on the long road here had offered anything like a proper bath. Surely Link missed it too, but Rajo refused to surrender the water until he at least asked.

Of course, falling asleep in the bath wasn't dignified either. Rajo took his time washing and combing and trying to oil his long hair, yawning the whole time. It was hard work, and it took three times as long to feel clean as it should have.

Link still didn't notice - or at least didn't say anything. Not even when he came to the kitchen to collect the whistling kettle. He hummed absently to himself, fussing with tea leaves and the fat, brightly painted pot Lamis made for them.

Rajo shoved away the painful memory. Only littles cried. He had to be nine now, responsible and serious and hardworking, so he could tame the magic that made accidents happen and go home.

Then again, the farm wasn't really home either. Not for Link, and not for him. But maybe if he worked hard enough, maybe he too could be an expensive sorcerer one day and people would bring him enough rupees that they could stay at the farm forever and Da Corfo would forgive the fire and everything else. And maybe when he was more powerful than the magic, the dreams would stop too.

Rajo pretended to be cleaning his nails when Link brought him one of the steaming teacups. He wasn't sure he could hold back the questions burning in his throat if he let so much as a thank you roll from his tongue now. Ma Idrea would scold him for it - but she wasn't here. And wouldn't be.

“Don't scowl so,” said Link, cooling his own cup of tea with  amber spirits Rajo could smell even above the scent of his soaps and oils. “It's not some apothecary brew. You like it. And it has honey in it.”

“It doesn't taste like honey,” said Rajo, cursing himself for burning his tongue like an idiot little. He hoped Link didn't notice. He couldn't bear his sympathies right now, or his scolding.

“It's a different kind of honey,” said Link after a long moment. His voice wobbled in a strange way when he said it, and he took a long pull from his own cup. “Where do you want me to put your bed?”

Rajo shrugged. “I can build it myself tomorrow. Ensren showed me how it goes together.”

Link winced, and stared at his cup. “Don't be in such a hurry to grow up. All of this is only because -”

“I know,” said Rajo, gritting his teeth. “You don't have to remind me. I'm not a baby. I won't forget what happened.”

“It's my fault.” Link shook his head. “I knew you would need a good teacher long in the before. I thought there would be more time - I hoped I could find a better way to help fix it before it hurt you. I'm sorry.”

Rajo wiped his nose with the back of his hand and looked away. He _would not_ cry. He felt hideous, just as all the voices in his dreams said he was. He should be grateful. Link was only trying to help. He came back to the country he hated to work as a common laborer when he was anything but. To a horrible place which would surely punish him terribly if they found out he ran away from the war.

All because his halfbreed son couldn't control his stupid magic.

Rajo sat in the steaming water and wrestled with his anger and the queasy sort of pain in his stomach that he always had when his mind wandered where it shouldn't. No doubt whatever Link felt worse every time he even looked at Rajo, and _he_ never complained.

Link finished his tea in silence and poured himself a second cup. Rajo climbed out of the water and wrapped himself in one of the enormous fluffy indigo bath sheets Ma Idrea insisted they take with them to Hyrule. She said she didn't trust the long-eared foreigners to have proper cloth, but Da Corfo told him in secret it was her way of sending hugs with them even in exile.

Rajo wasn't very good at not thinking about things.

He dripped his way to the dry sink and stood on his toes to set his cup safely inside. Link ignored him, or at least he pretended to, until Rajo poked his side with one of the bone combs. He blinked absently at Rajo, as if he couldn't understand what was right under his nose.

“My hair will be snarls in the morning if it’s not braided,” said Rajo.

Link winced. “I’m sorry.”

“You’ll never get better if you don't practice,” said Rajo, offering him the combs again.

“Maybe,” said Link, his pale face flooding with pink as he touched the top of Rajo’s head with hesitant fingers. “It's... hard. And anyways your hair has a mind of its own.”

Rajo shrugged. “So does magic.”

Link shook his head as he smoothed back already rebellious curls. “No. Magic has rules.You just need a good teacher.”

“Why can't _you_ be my teacher?” Rajo regretted the lapse even as the words fell from his lips. The question had plagued him since he overheard the grownups talking. He was pretty sure he knew the answer already, but it wouldn't stop coming to the top of his tongue - and now, past it.

Link pulled back his hand as if burned.

“This is all so stupid,” said Rajo, turning away. “I never wanted this curse. It's not my fault. Things _happen_ and I can't- I can't do _anything_ to stop them and-”

“Shh,” said Link, catching his shoulder. “Please don’t be angry, Jojo. That will only make the bad things worse. I can't be your teacher because-”

“Because I remind you of the war. I know,” sighed Rajo. “It's fine. It's just stupid.”

Link turned him around and laid his other hand on his shoulder, trying to meet his eye. “I can't teach you how to tame your magic because I don't know _how_. I hoped we had a few more years - but I was wrong. I don't want you or anyone to suffer for my mistakes anymore. You need the best teachers we can find, teachers who can strengthen the light inside you. Don't - don't ever doubt that light, Jojo.”

Rajo let Link pull him into a rare embrace, reveling in the treat even as his heart raced and ached. “It’s hard.”

“I know,” said Link, petting his hair as he cradled Rajo against his chest. “Shadows will always try to find a way in. That's what shadows do. You must always guard that light with hope, _especially_ when it's hard.”

“Yeah,” sighed Rajo. “I’ll try.”

Link pulled him tight again. “So will I.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T-13

Autumn rain whispered against the windows and softened the edges of everything. Golden halos bloomed around the lanterns as the air grew heavy and damp, hushing the noise of the other students’ riotous exit. Rajo lingered in the classroom, taking fastidious care to straighten the pages of his books and align their spines perfectly in his section of the low shelves lining the room. The afternoon instructor shook her head at him, but said nothing.

They’d sat for exams today, so the big wall slates were already clear. Rajo could invent no other excuse to linger. The others seemed to have moved on though - perhaps restless after too many hours of sitting and remembering and solving puzzles. He gathered his satchel and took his time at the tarnished mirror in the cloakroom.

It was good to have an excuse to wrap his bright muffler high and pull his hood forward. Most folk in Castletown were more or less Hylian, even if their ears could only be called pointy when you squinted. Outsiders were amusing curiosities to gawk at and question - and blame for any and all misfortunes.

Roan would start a fight in his place, but he wouldn't care what happened next when he did. He wouldn't have to - _he_ wasn't witchborn.

Thinking of Roan reminded him of the letter in his writing desk at home, unanswered. He should make the climb to the hill overlooking the barracks soon, maybe today. Lightsday was good for spying, because everyone was either busy with attending their devotions or avoiding the same.

Rajo slipped through the close alley between two enormous guildhouses and vaulted over the low fence into the garden behind. Ma Idrea would surely love it as he did if she could but see its rambling and overgrown glory, full of fragrant blossoms. The house the garden belonged to never held anyone but servants, and they didn't worry about child-thieves the way some Hylians did. Maybe they had nothing worth stealing.

Sometimes the housemaiden even came out to walk with him - but not today, with the weather even a little dreary. She took chill easily, and had better be curled up by the fire and leave her chores for a warmer day. Rajo didn't mind - he didn't really like his notebooks to get wet, and Anna always wanted to know about his studies, even the really boring ones at the abbey.

Anna was easy to talk to, and she didn’t care that Rajo wasn't like other boys. He was surprised to realize he would miss her when they left Castletown for the winter holiday. Everything else about this country he was certain he could live a hundred years without, except perhaps this strange refuge in the shadow of the great temple complex.

“I will bring her something,” Rajo muttered as he let himself through the far garden gate into a narrow street leading to the east market. He didn't carry many rupees with him, but he could always raid one of the wishing fountains if he needed to. Vah Kamenus would be furious if he knew how Rajo plotted to misuse his teachings, but what else was such a minor fetching spell good for anyway? It wasn't a fast magic, and wouldn't work on anything heavy or which he couldn't see.

Anyways, he knew he’d replace what he borrowed later, next time Link unlocked his blue brass-bound chest. The fountain spirit would understand. He just needed Anna to remember him. It was important.

What she would like best though, he did _not_ know. Rajo wandered through the small east market, frowning over each of the little shop-carts. Grownups mostly ignored him, as they often did on Lightsday, so he even had a kind of bubble of quiet to himself in the middle of chaos.

If he was buying for Lamis, this would be easy. She loved anything bright, but rare pigments and new patterns best of all. Roan’s wishes he could not answer, for he wanted a real sword most of all, and Da Corfo would never allow it.

For little Taedra, anything sweet would do. Ensren wanted nothing at all, or pretended to. Rajo knew his true weakness - books. Any and all books he encountered, he read. The challenge with him was finding something truly new or rare.

“This is _not_ a present for Anna,” Rajo muttered under his breath. Vah Kamenus would lecture him on discipline again if he knew how his worst student couldn’t even focus on a task of his own choosing.

It wasn't his fault. Everything in the market worth seeing suggested itself as a gift for someone - but nothing quite suited Anna. Brightly patterned ribbons seemed too garish for her, and what use had she for a set of delicate bluesteel throwing knives? She never said anything at all of her own reading, and a bag of bright sugarbloom trifles seemed entirely childish. He was supposed to be ten now, after all.

Rajo climbed the alley stairs and up the iron ladder to the roof of the corner shop, heading home empty handed. Rain came so often to Hyrule that they built everything with deep eaves and wide gutters, well supported. The leap from one section to the next wasn't far. He didn't care if he did splash - he wore sturdy boots, and anyone below ought to be wearing a hood anyway.

Rajo always made a tidy profit on this road, collecting chipped rupee shards from the detritus, no doubt forgotten by crows. That was how he noticed Link in the market below. He should have been working. Unless a true downpour came, Link took but one rest day in a week - the ping and thud and whine of construction always underlay the babble of the crowd, even on Lightsday, even in a misting rain.

Rajo slipped into the shadow of a false gable, hidden even if Link looked up, which he didn't.

He just stood at the gem-setter’s table, his golden hair fallen into his face and his broad shoulders painfully squared. People might as well have jostled a stone for all he moved.

The merchant didn't seem to care. Rajo couldn't hear much but the lilting whine with which they said it. He tried to convince himself to keep going, to get home before Link could. Whatever the reason for his leisure, it surely would mean less time to spy for Roan.

Link said something. The merchant laughed, waving a dismissive hand. Link raised his eyes from the table only enough to meet the merchant’s and even Rajo shivered at his hard looks.

“I said - _how_ _much_.”

The merchant tittered and fumbled after excuses. Link moved not at all. Heads turned, and the crowd pulled away a little from the stranger with the harsh voice.

The merchant named a price.

Rajo held his breath.

The crowd relaxed and turned back to their various errands when Link opened his purse. Rajo didn't - but perhaps he was the only one who could see the unsettling blue glitter inside. The merchant should have - but they were entirely consumed with filling their own purse with the gold and silver rupees Link gave them.

Rajo counted far more of both than a plain carpenter and mason should ever see at once. Where had he gotten - or hidden - that kind of money? Why live as a near pauper for seven years if he had a king’s ransom at his command? And what was so precious that he would actually _spend_ it?

Rajo eased closer, trying to see which glittering pieces the merchant packed away. He wasn't sure what all of them were, but the pectoral he knew at once to be glorious topaz. That piece maybe was worth a hundred rupees - but not as much as Link paid.

Not that he seemed to care. He stood motionless and silent while they packed his purchases in black wool inside a wide, shallow box.

Rajo lingered. Once Link marched away down a side street with his gems, the merchant laughed. They giggled with their neighbor about the fierce fool who hadn't even blinked at ‘the Gerudo story’ and obliviously paid three times the value of the ornaments without a breath of question.

That couldn't be normal, even for his eccentric ‘uncle’.

 

**_\- o - O - o -_ **

 

Rajo decided to spy on the parade ground first, and go home later. It better explained the muck on his trousers anyway, and gave him time to think. Not that he should have been worried on either count, as it happened.

Link wasn't inside the little house at all, though all the lanterns burned bright. Rajo turned down the wicks as he went upstairs, surprised to see Link’s bedroom both wide open and empty. He wrestled with the temptation to see if he could pick the lock on the big blue and brass chest.

“Better to wait,” he told himself, changing into fresh clothes and hiding the others deep in the laundry bin. He didn't know how long Link would be gone, and getting caught formed no part of his plans.

The yellow window in his own room glowed even as twilight fell - which must mean lights somewhere behind the house. Even yellow rupees didn't shine on their own. Rajo listened carefully, but heard nothing.

Then again, Link could be frighteningly quiet when his mind started looping. Rajo couldn't hear him without being very close, and even then it rarely made sense. Mostly it was like listening to a thunderstorm and a wildfire and cracking stone and flooding rapids all at once, and the images in his head flickered like lightning from one thing to another.

Everyone on the farm agreed the war must have been especially horrible for Link.

Rajo decided to look for him. Perhaps he went to buy more spirits at the public house, or maybe he ran into thieves on the way home. He wasn't sure what help he could be, but maybe if Link was in trouble, Rajo could wish something at his enemies.

Or maybe he just fell asleep in their little garden again. He did that sometimes, sitting down too long between tasks.

Rajo peeked out the back window - Link sat on one of the carved benches he’d built that summer with an empty cup in his hands. Not asleep, but he barely noticed Rajo come to stand beside him.

“Hey,” said Rajo.

Link only grunted and kept staring at the sad oak sapling in the middle of the garden. An earthenware jug sat beside his feet, and the shallow ebony box on the far end of the bench.

Rajo stared at their little tree also, and wondered if it would survive the winter. Despite Link’s careful tending, the little plot still seemed dreadfully bare with stumpy secondhand rose canes and herbs gone to seed. The oak sapling in the center of it all looked silly with its overproud flourish of exactly thirteen fat copper leaves.

“It's getting cold,” said Rajo. Link’s clothes were soaked through, and Ma Idrea would have scolded him for such negligence.

“How was school,” said Link, bending to recover the jug and tilt more of its spirits into his cup. This one smelled sweet and somehow hot, less unpleasant than some of those he brought home.

“Fine,” said Rajo. “How long before we leave for holiday? Master Budro wants to make me a list of things so I won't fall behind while we’re gone.”

Link nodded. “So you’re doing well? In all your studies?”

“Yeah,” lied Rajo. “It's fine. So when do we leave?”

“The snow won't be too bad this year. And we won't need a cart this time, so.” Link shrugged. “I can start making inquiries next week or so, find out when the architect will call the season closed.”

Rajo frowned. “So we just leave everything here.”

“Don't worry. Won't be gone long,” said Link, lifting his cup. “Maybe a month.”

Rajo made a face. “That's not enough time for _anything_. Can't we stay through planting?”

“You hate planting,” said Link.

“So? School is even _more_ boring,” said Rajo, though he didn't really mean it. “At least Da and Ensren will need us for the kidding. Roan is especially stupid at that.”

Link laughed, short and bitter. He didn't need to say it - they both knew he was making excuses. Neither of them fit well in Castletown.

But where else could they go?


	8. Chapter 8

Autumn mornings in Hyrule began with shy blue light and a rising wind. The trees whispered as Castletown stretched and groaned under ash-blue clouds. The noise of masons and carpenters beginning their day drowned out the gossip of songbirds long before the sun shooed away the clouds and the heavy outer gates opened to the world.

Rajo refused to even acknowledge the daylight’s hateful advance. He pulled the patterned bed curtains closed and sulked alone in the dark. Castletown could see to itself - he wanted nothing whatever to do with it.

They would be leaving week after next, and Rajo still hadn't found a proper gift for Anna. Worse, Vah Kamenus refused to let him borrow any of the concordances he was supposed to be copying. Master Budro’s reading list was so long he’d never finish half of it in a whole season of work and never mind a holiday month. Only the maths instructor understood anything at all, and only her work list resembled possibility. He could even begin it now if he wanted. Which he didn't.

Eventually the sheer boringness of staring at the shadows on the intricate tapestry over his bed sent him into a restless sort of drowse. Memories and dreams nibbled at the frayed edges of his mind, and still he pulled the blankets high and refused to budge until nature demanded he move at least a little.

Link was away building walls and towers for Hylian overseers, so he washed his face and retied his hair in a simple three-strand plait. It came out lopsided, but no one would see anyway. He fed himself simply on bread and cheese stolen from the tiny pantry Link built under the stairs, and returned to bed.

 

**_\- o - O - o -_ **

 

Link knocked at his door on the sixth day, and wouldn't go away until Rajo agreed to let him in. Mostly because he promised sweet tea and honeyed nut cakes, and Rajo could smell both even through the door.

“Hey,” said Link when Rajo opened the door. “You feeling any better? You didn't tell me you were getting sick.”

“Yeah? So what,” said Rajo, taking the dish of cakes from the tray and retreating back to bed with it.

Link sighed, and followed with the rest. “You haven't been to school in days.”

“So,” said Rajo.

“So everything.” Link hooked the chair from under Rajo’s desk with his foot and dragged it over beside the bed. He settled the footed tray cautiously on the bed next to Rajo and draped himself backwards over the chair, crossing his arms on the top rail. “The headmaster sent me a message, and I talked to your teachers today.”

Rajo scowled into his cup of tea. “Who else ratted me out? Vah Kamenus?”

Link shook his head, pouring tea for both of them. It smelled of flowers and freshly turned soil and of course, honey. “Talk to me, Jojo. Why don't you want to go to school?”

“School is stupid,” said Rajo. “I don't see what reading about dead people and counting made-up goats has to do with anything _important_ anyway.”

“Learning things is never stupid,” said Link, cooling his tea with his breath. “What happened, Jojo?”

“Nothing,” lied Rajo.

Link only stared at him and waited.

“I hate this place,” snapped Rajo.

“I know,” said Link.

Rajo snarled at him in sheer frustration, but Link didn't look away or even flinch. He looked almost - sad. That was somehow worse than yelling.

“It wasn't my fault,” mumbled Rajo.

“Ah,” said Link. He drank his tea, and shook his head. “It never is, is it?”

Rajo rolled his eyes. “I mean it. I’m doing all the _stupid_ tasks Vah Kamenus gives me, and I pray to the stupid gods _every morning_ , and _nothing_ changes. It's completely stupid and I'm not going anymore and _you can't make me_.”

“That doesn't sound like nothing,” said Link quietly.

Rajo glared.

Link waited.

“I burnt the velvet, ok?” Rajo growled, looking away. His stomach churned and his ears burned with the shame of it all. “It’s all ruined, and Vah Kamenus doesn't even want me in his class anyway, so good riddance.”

“What happened?”

“I told you,” Rajo snarled. “I burnt it. I didn't mean to, but I did, and now it's ruined. I'm never going back and I don't care what anybody thinks!”

“Ah,” said Link, finishing his tea. “But. You do care, or you wouldn't lock yourself away like this. Tell me _exactly_ what happened when the velvet burned, so we can solve the riddle together this time.”

Rajo stared, dumbfounded. Link wasn't yelling even a little bit, though a single ell of the black wool velvet cost fifty rupees. Vah Kamenus had turned a fascinating shade of purple when it happened. _Then_ the yelling started.

Link picked up a little cake for himself, and nudged the plate towards Rajo.

So Rajo told him how his stitches wobbled and how he did the pattern backwards the first time. How he spent two days carefully unpicking all the thread-of-silver and indigo silk and brushing the velvet so he could do it over. How he fought with tangling thread and stupid slippery needles to make his stitches be even, while the rest of the class learned how to write the secret names of the spirit the black cloths were _for_.

He didn't mean for it to happen. He'd just been so _angry_. He saw red spots just thinking about it - but only littles cried and threw tantrums. He was supposed to be ten. And he was witchborn. This should have been _easy_.

The reek of burning sugar brought him back to himself at once, and he dropped the cake back among the others. Two misshapen black marks glared from where his fingers had touched it. Because of course they did.

“We will fix it,” Link said softly, offering his hand. “I will buy some new velvet tonight, and we’ll work on it together.”

Rajo looked at his hand and nursed the ache in his chest. “And when I ruin that one too?”

Link shook his head. “Don't think about that yet. Rest for now - we have some work to do.”

Rajo frowned. “What kind of work?”

“You’ll see,” said Link with a sour-apple smile. “It's a secret.”

 

**_-o - O - o -_ **

 

Rajo paced the confines of the cold grotto, uneasy in the eerie blue light. He didn't like the glowing crystals at the grotto entrance and he didn't like the queasy blue-purple light from the glowing stone Link brought with him. He’d wondered why Link brought an iron pot with them, but now that it held the blue-purple stone he found he’d rather Link brought the lid too.

The grotto didn't get any larger or brighter for circling it a third time.

“Don't be stubborn,” said Link, crossing his arms over his chest. He looked so strange and almost ghostly in this light. “Call your magic. It's important.”

“I know _that_ ,” snapped Rajo, kicking a pebble savagely. It bounced off the hard-packed dirt and stone walls and landed with a plop in a puddle of stale rainwater. How could Link ask that of him? “I just can't ok? This is stupid.”

“You can and you will,” said Link, his voice hard. “It's nothing you haven't already done a thousand times before. I know _what_ you're capable of - I need to see _how_ you're doing it.”

“That’s not fair,” Rajo growled, crossing his own arms over his chest and planting his feet. “I haven't broken _that_ many things - anyways this is completely different. I won't do it. I won't.”

“We can't go home until you do,” said Link with a shrug. “Show me how these accidents happen.”

“I can't do it. You don't understand - I don't _know_ why it happens,” Rajo shouted. Maybe if he was louder, Link would hear him. “It just _does_. Stupid witchblood I never even wanted-”

“Then we’ll stay right here until it does,” said Link, settling into a parade rest stance he could hold for hours on end.

Rajo kicked pebbles and paced and wrestled with his anger.

Link waited.

 

**_\- o - O - o -_ **

 

Rajo woke slowly, confused and a little dizzy. His stomach roared - and somewhere in the formless darkness he smelled toasted cheese and spiced apples. He rolled over, and he felt the inside of his head slosh painfully against his eyes.

He pressed his face into the soft floof of a down pillow and tried to think of nothing but breathing, as Vah Kamenus taught.

Rajo wasn't at all good at not thinking about things.

Everything about last night was somehow jumbled and fuzzy around the edges. Last night he knew he’d gotten angry, but now he felt hollowed out. He’d lost all sense of time in that grotto, and didn't even know how they’d gotten home. If he was home. It certainly felt like his own bed. It smelled right.

So what happened? Besides losing his temper? Besides Link calling some weird light-prism? If in fact it wasn't just another nightmare.

Rajo fumbled for the curtains and peered out into the soft darkness of his own room. The golden window held only the faintest glow, and all the shadows of his furniture and books and discarded clothing fell exactly where they should.

Rajo pulled himself out of bed and rubbed gunk from his eyes. He had to push his sleeves up to do it - for some reason he was wearing a kitten-soft tunic many sizes too large. He peeked out onto the quiet landing, and caught the glimmer of lamplight from downstairs.

“Good morning,” said Link from somewhere below.

Rajo grunted, working his way carefully down the stairs. He felt almost like his head might roll away without him if he moved it too much. The smell of breakfast was only stronger downstairs - and when Link uncovered a tray of all his favorite things on the table, he couldn't stop himself. He stuffed his face with sweet and savory, blind to anything but the next bite until it was gone.

Link sat across from him in silence, drinking tea and waiting, red-eyed.

Rajo hiccuped and stared at the table as he wiped grease from his face. The shallow box lay open in the middle of it, overflowing with silver and topaz jewels. He didn't know what to ask first.

“These are yours,” said Link, touching the bright cabochon in the middle of one triangle bauble. “They say topaz is drops of sunlight caught in stone. But they _also_ say it carries the power of lightning.”

“Don't need help with that,” grumped Rajo. The jewels were beautiful - but whether it really happened or not, the vision of Link’s skin crawling with lightning unsettled him.

“No, I think I’ve been looking at the riddle upside down,” said Link, shaking his head. “They were always meant for you. I just didn't understand. I'm sorry.”

“It’s fine,” said Rajo, even though he didn't really understand at all. “Can we go home now? _Home_ -home?”

“Not yet,” said Link with a sigh. He picked up a book from beside him and slid it across the table. “This is also yours. It will help you.”

“I don't _want_ help,” muttered Rajo.

“I know,” said Link. “It's okay, you know. You didn't do anything wrong. I asked you to show me, and you did. I'm not hurt, see?”

Rajo hiccuped and folded his arms and tried to count slow breaths like Vah Kamenus said. So it did happen. It wasn't a dream and it wasn't really an accident. _He_ called the lightning.

Link came around the table and offered his open hand. Rajo looked - Link didn't have any more scars than he did yesterday. Except for the redness about his eyes, and a hint of spirits on his breath, he didn't look hurt at all, just as he said.

“It’s ok,” said Link, drawing him into a fierce embrace. “Just - talk to me, Jojo. I can't help you if you lock yourself away in the dark like that. Hold onto light - to hope. I'm here for you. Always.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T-11

Summer roses filled the garden with a syrupy, somnolent musk. The heat of the day felt somehow heavier in their shadow, where the buzz of a hundred thousand insects living out their tiny lives drowned out even the deafening noise of solstice crowds outside.

Rajo leaned back against the comfortable crookedness of the willow tree at the heart of the garden, and helped himself to another tiny ginger cake.

Anna laughed at him, and snapped the bright linen in her hands so a fine mist flew his way. “Lazy thing - shouldn't you be out there, celebrating and carrying on?”

“Cake first,” said Rajo, licking his fingers to get all the sugar-dust.

“You've been saying that for the last half-dozen,” she said, draping the cloth over the memoryleaf hedges to soak up the sun. “Leave some for me, glutton.”

Rajo pretended to consider it. “If you _really_ wanted cake, you’d leave that stupid stuff for later. So really, I'm doing you a favor-”

Anna laughed and threw a wet petticoat at him. It never would have connected anyway, but he made a great show of flailing about with glittering witchfire as he cast a fetching spell in reverse. Kamenus would have him scrubbing candelabra for a month if he knew what use his elegant cantrips saw in Rajo’s hands, but Anna would never tell on him.

Probably.

Anyways, she still wore the bright fire-and-ice patterned shawl he gave her almost two years ago, whatever the weather. She never _really_ shooed him out of the garden, either. And she always giggled when she scolded him.

“A fine mess you are today,” she said, pinning the petticoat on the line properly this time. “Don't you have work of your own to attend? If you're not going to be festive, at least you could be useful.”

“I finished my reports yesterday.” Rajo shrugged, folding his arms behind his head. “What does it matter anyway? It's just some poetry and parades. The only magic in all of it is little stuff, luck charms and little glamours. You're not missing anything.”

Anna shook her head at him, hanging the rest of the laundry with a meditative grace. Watching her work soothed him in a way he couldn't quite explain. She didn't seem to mind - she said she liked having company. Usually she had afternoons free, but on hot days like this one, the head keeper liked to do as much wash as they could find places to dry it. Anyways, Hylians had a thing about cleaning house from rooftree to cellar in the month before solstice.

Stupid superstition, really. The spirits of disorder were far stronger at the other end of the year entirely.

“There,” said Anna, clipping the last pin in place and surveying her work with her hands on her hips. “That should be everything, unless we lost a sock down the sluice-gate again. Do your books have any spells for that?”

Rajo shook his head. “Why use magic when wire-cloth would do as well or better?”

“Wire rusts, and all the faster with washing soap on it.” Anna laughed, but she joined him in the shade, stretching out on the blanket he’d given her last year. Unlike the shawl, the blanket was all in somber stormcloud colors, exactly as it came off the sheep. Except cleaner.

She seemed to like it well enough, at least. He wasn't sure what to bring her this year, but that was months away yet. For now, he would share his cakes - and enjoy her surprise when she looked at the plate again and found delicate chocolates dusted with Terminan spice mixed in with the common cakes.

 

**_\- o - O - o -_ **

 

Anna’s garden at twilight reflected all the glories of sunset, humming with vibrant life. Rajo loved this hour, when the noise of the city faded and the prickly thrumming feel of the magic shifted. Especially at solstice, after the streets emptied and assembly rooms filled. The dance of the long days and the onrushing shadow always seemed to suggest mysterious things hidden just beyond his reach. Sometimes he imagined he could even hear voices on the wind.

Anna yawned. “Shouldn't you be going home?”

“Not yet,” said Rajo, placing a bright ribbon to mark their place in the book he was reading to her. “Voh is always last to leave the worksite. Anyways why does it matter where I study?”

She laughed, tying off the threads of her mending. “Reading wondertales to a servant isn't studying, Anjo.”

“Pfft. Then you haven't been listening.” Rajo rolled his eyes at her. “Legends and stuff are basically histories of magic, or else like if cookbooks were turned into a story so you’d remember it better.”

“Vah Kamenus said that?”

“Old men like him don't know everything,” Rajo began, distracted by a strange glimmer in the shadows of the big house.

Anna turned to discover what he was staring at. She squeaked and dropped her mending as two shadowed figures dropped over the garden wall with hushed curses.

Rajo knew those words. Link said them when he didn't think anybody was listening, and sometimes when the spirits unlocked his tongue. He didn't know what most of them meant, but it must be amazing because they made his teachers go red-faced when he said them.

Rajo handed the book to Anna and stood, reciting a minor light-my-path spell. Topaz shivered against his skin, and threads of shivering lightning sparks spun out above his head and shot towards the intruders. They dropped their burdens to draw shining curved swords.

One hissed something he didn't understand except that it was about Hylians.

“Silence, and you live,” said the other. “Maybe.”

“Leave, or you don't,” returned Rajo, weaving a wicked-looking ‘blade’ of lightning for himself. He wasn't sure if it would really be good for anything in a fight, but this was one of his favorite spells from the weird old journal Link gave him. Or at least his favorite so far that actually _worked_.

Both of the intruders swore. But - they lowered their swords even as he brandished his. Anna hid behind him, whispering ‘no’ over and over, as if that would do anything at all.

One of the strangers stepped forward, and between the lightning-threads and the angle of sunset, now he could see how very tall she was. She wore strange clothing, and one of her ears looked like there was a piece missing. She growled something at him in strange words, gesturing with her free hand.

The other said something else about Hylians.

“Go away,” he said, pointing toward the gate with his lightning blade. Just in case it did something stupid, burning wood wasn't so bad. “Why are you even here? Nobody said you could come in. Who are you?”

The woman in the light laughed, and the bright gems they both wore at wrist and throat and brow sparkled. It was hard to be sure in the twilight but her short floofy hair looked almost red as his own, and her skin as dark. She said something he didn't understand, except that it seemed like a question.

Rajo advanced, trying to look dangerous. “No - _I_ will ask the questions and _you_ will answer. I hear guards - they’re following you, aren't they? Why? Were you in a fight? Are you a thief?”

The one in the shadows lowered her blade, stepping forward so he could see she too was tall and brown and red-haired, wearing the same strange clothes and curl-toed boots. She shook her head at him, and said something to the other, who sheathed her blade.

“Where are your sisters?” The woman with the short hair spoke with a strange accent, like her tongue couldn't quite finish the shapes of the words.

“Who do you think you are? What would you know about my family?”

“Pfah,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “More than you maybe-”

Rajo didn't get to ask her any other questions. The shouting on the other side of the wall grew closer, and the strangers swore again. They reclaimed their burdens as the guard found the gate.

Rajo hid his magic when he saw their bright helmets and spears bristling. The strangers raced down the twisted garden paths and vanished in the deep shadow of the bigger house on the other side of the garden. The town guard followed.

Mostly.

 

**_\- o - O - o -_ **

 

Rajo frowned at their own bland, straggly garden, shamelessly eating more than half the oatnut cakes on his own. Link didn't notice, or at least didn't say anything about it. His muttering was mostly just trying to remember how to weave a six-strand plait.

To be fair, he was getting better at it. He still struggled with spinebraids of any kind, and he would probably always need a cup of applejack at his side before he could start. But on most days he didn't actually even drink much of it until after Rajo’s hair was tidy again.

Rajo should probably have felt bad about eating some of Link’s share while his hands were busy, but he couldn't help it. Despite the shame of being insulted by the guard and marched home like a wayward hooligan, and the awkward pain of Link telling the old lie about the island orphan he adopted in his wanderings, even after a whole roast cucco pie to himself, he was still hungry. Maybe Link was right, and he would grow taller again this fall.

And he would know, wouldn't he?

Rajo grumped in the general direction of the watchtower to the west, and picked up his tea again. An early birthday present - not just this one pot, but a whole tin of leaves for each of his favorite blends, two dark, one red, and this white jasmine one. Link even gave him two bottles of honey all for his own, one yellow-gold and one of darkest amber.

He’d talked about building a shelf maybe, later this year, just for tea things. And a glass-house off the kitchen, to grow little citron bushes and firefruit and rare safflinas that didn't like the cold.

If they stayed.

Even a week ago, Rajo would have embraced _anything_ that meant leaving the city behind. But that was before he saw actual Gerudo, not just pictures in books or quarterblood nobodies from Ordon and such. Before the pieces of all Link’s silences fit together.

Now _Link_ wanted to run. He couldn't even say where, but as soon as the town guard finished yelling about thieves and left, he told Rajo to start packing his things. Rajo tried to explain that nobody minded if he stole a few roses or a nap in a fragrant sunbeam, but Link wouldn't hear it.

With foreign thieves come to Castletown, he said, nobody was safe.

“Why,” said Rajo to the struggling young oak sapling.

“Why what?” Link mumbled as he crossed another set of strands and petted them smooth.

Rajo winced - thinking out loud _definitely_ wasn't safe. “I dunno. Why _everything_?”

Link laughed. “The world is as the gods made it, that's why.”

“Maybe,” said Rajo. “Wherever people go, they change things. I read that the river to the east used to be all crooked, and the fields would flood every five years or so. Now it's straight and deep and so fast that when the bridge cracked a hundred years ago, half of it washed away, and that's why the rocks don't match.”

“Nothing strange in that,” said Link, weaving another crossing. It felt like he was nearly halfway done, but it always felt that way past the nape.

“But then which river is the right one? Slow and crooked or fast and deep? Did the gods make the river right and the King broke it? Or did the gods make it crooked so the King has something useful to do?”

Link sighed. “Where _do_ you get such ideas? What are you really trying to ask?”

“I'm serious. How does anyone know the way the gods want anything to be when people change stuff? Why do they let people change things if they're gonna get mad about it?”

“Because,” Link began, his hands clenching in Rajo’s hair. It wasn't enough to hurt. But he didn't finish speaking.

“It's ok,” said Rajo, setting his tea safely aside. “I was just wondering. It's not important.”

Link sighed, shaking his head and unwinding his fingers from Rajo’s long hair like he’d forgotten what he was doing with it. “Wonderings like that, Jojo, those need to be a secret. Just us.”

“Why? Because you lied to the guards? Because we lied to even _be_ here? _Or_ ,” said Rajo, bitterness rising on their tongue before they could stop it. “Is it because I'm witchborn? ”

“Not just that,” said Link softly.

“I want the truth,” said Rajo, turning around on the bench so he could see Link’s face. “For my birthday, I mean. Forget the rest - that’s just stuff. This is what I really want. Who am I?”

Link pulled his lower lip between his teeth and his eyes shone in the lanternlight. Telltale shimmers on his cheeks said enough, but Rajo was determined to make him answer this time.

“In another life, you would be asking the same question of the Lady of Sands this year,” said Link, his voice quiet and rough. “You were born of the Geldo people - Gerudo is how they say it here.”

“I know _that_ ,” said Rajo with a sigh.

Link looked as though he’d been kicked by a mule. “How long?”

“Forever, basically,” lied Rajo. “I'm not stupid.”

Link shook his head. “Why didn't you say anything?”

“I dunno,” said Rajo, suddenly tired. “I guess - I thought you'd tell me or something. Especially after you told us how Da Corfo switched me and Roan when you ran away from the war.”

“I'm sorry,” said Link, scrubbing a hand across his face.

“I know you were trying to protect me,” said Rajo. “But I'm not a baby. I want the truth.”

“The truth,” Link said to the indifferent stars. “It's still a week to your birthday.”

“So,” said Rajo. “I want to know now. It might be important.”

“Yeah,” said Link, wiping his hand across his face again. “The truth is - lots of people died, in the war. Good people. And also people who were mostly good, but sometimes did bad things. And people who could have been good except for bad things happening. I fought for Hyrule, and I did my best to do the right things - but that didn't save my friends. I hope Roan won't have to learn the hard way that war is _not_ adventure and honor and glory.”

“It’s ok. We talk about it,” said Rajo. “Wooden soldiers are different than people, but practicing now will make him better at it when he’s a grownup.”

Link shook his head. “He shouldn't want that. No one should.”

Rajo shrugged. “If there aren't any good soldiers, the bad ones will win.”

Link shivered, and reclaimed his cup before he spoke again. “I hoped you wouldn't ever have to think about such dark things. Bad enough you were born in the middle of it.”

Rajo shrugged. “I don't mind.”

Link muttered something he couldn't understand, but Rajo heard the same shapes in the words as the Geldo women spoke.

Link took another drink, and stared at the egg moon for a while.

Rajo waited.

“Rajenaya means ‘hope’,” he said. “But there is a bad magic. A kind of storm so bad it can destroy everything so nobody can live anywhere and nothing will grow and everything is horrible. That's why I took you away, and that's why we stayed at the farm when you were little. That's why we have to tell small lies and _that_ is why you need good teachers-”

“And that’s why you’re scared of scruffy thieves finding me? Because the Geldo have bad magic? Do they control the storm? Have you seen it? Is that what happened to my real mother?”

Link just looked at him for a long moment, and the silence stretched out to fill the little garden so even the hens in their bright little house stopped shuffling about and muttering in their sleep.

Rajo waited.

“I won't let it happen again,” Link whispered.

“I know,” said Rajo, taking Link’s hand in both of his.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T-8

The trouble with winning a fight was that there was always a next one. Every time he had to shut up another snot-nosed milk-faced foul-minded Hylian, three more decided they were going to be the ones to put the queer foreigner in his place.

Rajo shook the sting from his knuckles, and regretted it. Something moved inside his hand and that hurt more than any of the blows today’s fools managed to land on him. So he kicked dirt at the last one and snarled at the cowards who’d crowded at the mouth of the alley to watch.

They ran.

Sometimes, it was good to be the tallest one in all his classes. Even if he was hungry all the time. It helped when they were afraid of him, at least a little. Better if he could look more fierce - but he kept getting taller before he could have a chance to build any real muscle. Link still wouldn't let him wear black, either.

Rajo ran his good hand over his hair, and checked to make sure he still had all six earloops in their proper places. A footstep behind him - he pivoted, wrapping magic around his fist even though something crunched painfully when he did it.

“You fight like a demon,” said Roan, dropping down from a balcony above with a stupid grin. “You have _got_ to teach me how you do it.”

“Pfft. That wasn't anything,” he said, brushing off the loose tendrils of magic and straightening his waistcoat. “Those idiots haven’t tactics nor grace. You’d do better paying attention to your weaponsmaster than eavesdropping on this nonsense.”

“You won though,” countered Roan, shoving his hands in his pockets with complete disregard for the strain on the seams. “Anyways Da is always saying war is messy, and all they teach us is perfect forms and tactics in dusty old books. It's kinda fun, but it’s also kinda stupid.”

“Maybe you’re kinda stupid,” teased Rajo, trying to brush the dirt from his dark blue trousers with only his good hand. “Look, this stuff is no big deal. In a real fight you’re gonna have somebody who knows stuff about fighting when they come at you. These guys - they all think any _real man_ can just pick up any old stick and make the halfblood catamite crawl back into the mud. They don't know anything.”

Roan frowned. “What’s a catamite?”

“Dunno, don’t care,” Rajo shrugged. “Hylians have about a thousand words for coward. It's practically all the boys in my classes even think about.”

“Yeah,” sighed Roan. “C’mere, your collar is stupid. And I think you lost a button.”

“Says the rumpled cadet. Are you still losing fights with the pressing iron?” Rajo let Roan help only because he didn't have a mirror to do it himself. He adjusted the angle of his rings - awkward with the state of his hand - and reassured himself the hidden topaz wristlets hadn't come unclasped beneath his shirt.

“I'm getting better at it,” grumbled Roan, retying his yellow-gold neckcloth for him. “Anyways you said we were going somewhere so I didn't want my dress blues getting ruined.”

“You should always wear your best in the company of a lady,” said Rajo, thumping Roan on the ear. “Hurry up - we’ve a wagon to catch.”

Roan swore. “Why does _she_ have to come with us? She's _boring_. And it's not one button but two they lost for you. You’ll have to wear it open.”

Rajo made a face at the alley, but it didn't make any brass buttons appear. “Don't be stupid. You can’t spend all your time with soldiers - a good officer needs culture, little brother.”

Roan jabbed him in the ribs for that. “You're peacock enough for three. Anyways she's just a servant - how refined could she even be? And doesn't she have work to do or something?”

Rajo rolled his eyes. “More refined than you, country mouse. Come on - we can't take the good shortcut so we gotta hurry.”

 

**_\- o - O - o -_ **

 

Anna met them at the fence, but she wasn't dressed for adventure. She did look nice in rose and beetroot pinks though. Roan bowed over her hand properly like he hadn't complained the whole way there, and Rajo had to concentrate to vault the fence with only his off hand for support. Which was stupid.

“It is so good to see you both again, and in such health,” said Anna, but she was blushing when she said it.

“You see me every day,” said Rajo, hiding his hands behind his back. “What happened?”

“Nothing happened,” she said, glancing over her shoulder towards the big house. “You know this is a busy time of year, and with Marta caring for her little ones and Evan laid low by a flux and-”

Roan tsk’d and shook his head. “Terrible thing going around, that. A few of my cohort got shipped home because of it - _nasty_ stuff. You shouldn’t overtax yourself and risk catching-”

“Better still to keep your distance,” said Rajo, scowling at an oblivious Roan. “Come on - getting out of the city will be good for you.”

“I can't,” said Anna, lacing her fingers together nervously. “There is so much to be done. _Three days_ to solstice Anjo, and the new veils for the Lady of Light are but half stitched. I'm not a quarter as fast as Marta and with the weather as it is and having to water everything by bucket and ladle this year-”

“I _know_ how many days it is,” said Rajo, scowling at the innocent house. “One afternoon isn't enough to make any difference to stuff you have to do all year - and this is perfect weather for what I planned. The rest can wait.”

Anna sighed, fussing with the folds of her shawl. “I wish it could - but Father is worried about the drought. What if I _can't_ finish and She doesn't lift it this year?”

“Pfft. Superstition,” growled Rajo, turning heel for the big house. “Anyways, it's going to rain next week, so fetch your workbasket and you can bring your stupid lace along. You two head down the south road and I’ll catch up.”

Roan snickered behind his back as Anna tried to object. He refused to listen to either one of them, pushing his way into the big house. Shining white plaster and dark ash wood stretched enormously in all directions. Fine furniture stood ready to serve their absent owners. Freshly laundered dust cloths waited for them in neat stacks, and hundreds of paintings had been carefully unpacked and hung in their proper places for the coming solstice. Most weren't anything remarkable at all - indifferent landscapes and watery portraits preserved in tasteful frames by generations of doting (or blind) parents.

The family never actually came to Castletown, not in years. Nobody seemed to know why, but the servants made certain the house was never more than a few hours’ effort and a trip to the market from being ready for them.

The butler didn't even look up from his work when Rajo found him in the pantry. Or rather, one of the pantries. Rich Hylians built several, keeping dry goods and common dishes and silver all in separate cupboards or even whole rooms if they could.

“You put those hands where I can see them, young man,” grumped the butler, turning the fat silver tureen to rub away some imaginary blemish.

“The house looks exceptionally fine this year,” said Rajo, choosing a bottle of wine at random from the rack opposite the silver. He smoothed the curled up corner of the label, frowning at the artfully misspelled Old Hylian.

“Save your flattery for the gods,” said the old man. He settled the sculpted lid back into place and returned the tureen to the shelf. “Unlike _some_ soft-hearted working folk, I know exactly what to do with thieving truants. You try my patience boy, disrupting my daughter's work with your undisciplined, irreverent pranks."

“Pfft. I was only admiring your masters’ good taste,” said Rajo, shelving the bottle to the wrong place just to annoy him. He clasped his hands behind his back again, nestling the bad under the good as he paced the length of the small room. “Anyways I finished my classes early today, all the better to enjoy the fine weather we’re having.”

“Fine, he calls it,” sniffed the butler, selecting a ladle from the neat row of tools laid out on green cloth. “Go then, and enjoy your hooligan ways elsewhere.”

Rajo grinned. “As you wish-”

“Alone,” cut in the butler, returning a brighter ladle to the cloth and selecting the long carving knife next.

“Why?” Rajo asked the bright lime-washed ceiling. “The house is pristine already. Or did your masters finally remember you exist?”

“Watch your tongue,” said the old man quietly. “I rule this house in their absence, and I say no faithful servant under its roof goes out walking with any layabout foreign dilettante who can't walk down a street without picking a fight with every dog frequenting it.”

“I didn't start it,” Rajo gritted his teeth as he spoke so he wouldn't shout.

“Don't care,” said the butler, returning the shining carving knife to the cloth and selecting a toothed spoon. “Now, should a promising young cadet happen to call, whose hand is _not_ broken-”

Rajo swallowed the bitterness on his tongue and pretended to be interested in the carvings on the pantry door. “You're in luck then, as my little brother is in the garden. Someone else can make lace today - Anna has a prior engagement.”

The old man shook his head. “I know for a fact the academy does not willfully release its students at this hour. So - either you lie more boldly or your corruption is catching.”

“Well they do today,” Rajo rolled his eyes. “His holiday begins early, because it's my birthday week.”

The butler actually turned at that, but only to look down his nose at him. “Aren't you a bit old to believe in birthday fairies?”

“Look, it's just one afternoon,” said Rajo, gesturing without thought. Until he tried to open his hands and regretted it.

“And I have just one daughter,” countered the old man.

Rajo sighed. “I can't take her riding next week, because it will be raining then.”

The butler frowned. “And how do you know that?”

“Contrary to popular belief,” said Rajo, tugging his waistcoat straight again. “Witchblood _is_ actually good for something. She’ll be back before midnight, I swear it.”

The butler grumbled, adjusting the alignment of his tools. “Ten, or I ask the master of horse to have a conversation with your excessively indulgent guardian.”

Rajo bowed, trying not to laugh and spoil the joke. “Of course, goodsir. Two it is.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know some of these chapters are getting long. Bear with me, I beg you. 
> 
> I outlined last year, and in the space since, so much has happened in my own life that some of it is coming to the page.
> 
> And also - the deeper I get in this series, the more I realize there's some character development that need to be dug deeper than my original sketch allowed for. Beats that can't be hit without things in between. 
> 
> Anyways, thank you for reading. I hope it brings some light into your days.

The wind rolled over the fields, picking up the sweet fragrance of young buckwheat and millet. It would never be like home - but the open sky and the soft mumble of drowsy cows and fat hens soothed the raw places Castletown made in him.

Roan wasn't immune to the charm of the ranch either, despite all his boasting. He might be good at all of his Academy lessons, even drills, but his movement changed the moment they climbed out of the delivery wagon. Easier, more open. Roan always laughed, but his voice sounded different out here too.

Anna worried when they snuck into the milk wagon leaving town, and she worried as it bumped down the road. But by the time they reached the high wooden walls at the heart of the ranch, the sun and the wind and the adventure itself put her in brighter spirits.

And then, of course, he introduced them both to Malon and Ellon and Talon. They all loved Anna immediately, and exclaimed over Roan’s fine uniform and dashing looks. No one minded their stowing away at all, exactly as he wished.

Little Malon insisted her newest friends needed a tour of the house and the barn and the paddocks at once, claiming Anna’s hand so she couldn't argue. She charmed even proud Roan, though she was hardly a season older than Taedra.

If only all of Hyrule could all be like this, maybe it would be tolerable.

  
_**\- o - O - o -** _

 

Ellon wouldn't let him go with the others - she made up some story about a problem with the counterweight on one of the looms, but Rajo saw her frown when he tucked his hands behind his back. She didn't miss anything, ever.

Better not to spoil Anna’s adventure though, so he went along with the diversion and let Ellon examine his hand once they were safely out of the others’ sight.

“Anjo, you can’t keep picking fights like this,” she said, unbuttoning the cuff of his shirt to prod his wrist too.

“I didn't start it,” said Rajo, wincing when she poked the edge of the swollen places. “Anyways, I won, so it's fine.”

“It is _not_ fine,” she said, shooing him into the house. “You know you provoke them when you go flaunting your finery and your long hair and your foreign manners in their face every day. Compromise is a fact of life, Anjo.”

Rajo rolled his eyes at her, but held his tongue. They’d had this talk before. It only took longer if he argued, and it didn't change anything.

Ellon made him sit at the kitchen table while she unlocked the medicine pantry and assembled her tools. She once trained as a healer under a Zora master, far to the east. She could have started her own shop in any village in Hyrule, but she didn't want to give up her weaving. So she married Talon instead, and used her skills to make the ranch not merely prosperous, but renowned.

He had every intention of persuading her to sell him a case of Romani milk today, too. So he let her coat his hand in white chu jelly, and scold him for wearing ribbons braided in his hair, and feed him a dreadful cup of syrupy potion that made his mouth feel stuffed with wool.

“I’ll be more careful,” Rajo promised her when she ran out of worries to list.

“Don't look so dour,” she said, smoothing his hair gently. “You're such a bright young man - I hate to see you waste your potential like this. One of these days, the guard is going to catch you, and it won't matter to them who did what first. You know that, in your heart of hearts.”

“Yeah,” said Rajo, flexing his fingers experimentally. Still stiff and unpleasant, but better. “It's not fair though.”

Ellon sighed, and offered him a waxed paper packet of honeyglass to counter the sour taste of the potion. “Life rarely is.”

Rajo unwrapped the sweets carefully, smoothing out the creases in the paper. “Then why doesn't the royal family ever fix it?”

“Even the King is still human,” said Ellon, sitting down beside him. “Not even the spirits are perfect, Anjo. It’s our job to do the best we can with what we’re given.”

“Why is it our job to make do when _they’re_ the ones that make stupid rules in the first place? Why do the gods let people even make rules that aren't right?”

Ellon laid a gentle hand on his shoulder and pulled him close. “I would set the world right tomorrow if I could. But it will get better. When you're older-”

“How does being older change anything? How is it supposed to get any better if we never _do_ anything? Say, if the King made a bad rule,” said Rajo, laying one of the sweets on his tongue. “Who tells him it's wrong? The gods? Why don't they tell him _before_ he makes it a law? Do they tell the next King? Or are we supposed to wait for the next King to be smarter? Why?”

“I know this is really hard for you to understand right now,” Ellon sighed. “Remember last spring, when Malon tried to help the chicks hatch?”

“That's different. She didn't know better yet, and anyways cuccos are stupid,” said Rajo, eating another sweet.

“It's not as different as you think. We’ve reminded her every time another brood is getting close, but it's so hard for her to watch them struggle. So last year we let her help,” said Ellon, rubbing his back in slow circles.

“Yeah, well. That was stupid. They all died and I had to help bury them in the garden,” said Rajo. He’d missed three days of lessons that week, helping keep Malon from doing anything else stupid while the grown ups were busy with too many foals and calves at the same time.

“Exactly,” said Ellon. “But she needed to see the consequence of her actions to _understand_ why we have to let baby cuccos hatch on their own, even when it's hard. In the same way, the good gods are wiser than us, and let us make mistakes, so we can learn.”

Rajo frowned, turning the last piece of honeyglass over and over in his fingers. “It wasn't good or fair to let her kill the baby cuccoos. _They_ didn't need the lesson. They didn't do anything to deserve to die.”

“No one ever deserves to die,” said Ellon gently. “Death is just - part of how the gods made the world. Even if Farore never made any people or creatures who had to kill and eat to live, death would still be a part of Nayru’s Order. The sun sets so the moon can rise. Plants die so their seeds can grow into new plants. Even the stars aren't forever, Anjo.”

“That's different,” said Rajo. “It makes sense that things die when they’re old or sick, and for living things to become food for other living things - but the gods let people hurt and kill for even dumber reasons - or no reason at all.”

Ellon nodded. “The price of freedom is that some people will choose to do evil. That's why the gods gave us sages to maintain balance among the spirits, and kings to maintain order among people.”

“But who punishes the kings and sages if they’re the ones doing bad things? The priests say the golden gods are the source of all goodness and rightness,” said Rajo, trying to break the honey glass in half. It shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces instead. “But who makes the royal family listen to the gods’ wishes? How do we know they're not lying about what the gods told them, or if they said anything at all?”

Ellon sighed. “We only have power over our own choices, Anjo. We make do with all the rest, and we try to live in the light as best we can.”

Rajo rearranged the fragments of honeyglass on the table, trying to quiet the roaring inside his chest. “There won't be any light left for anyone if no one ever does anything about stupid rules.”

Ellon sighed, and pulled him into her arms. He let her only because no one else was around to see.

She sighed at him again, and petted his hair. “You have such passion in you that life is never going to be easy for you. Just - please _think_ about which battles you can afford to fight, _before_ you fight them. What good will you be able to do for anyone if you let ignorant bullies goad you into doing something you can't walk away from?”

 

**_\- o - O - o -_ **

 

Rajo caught up to the others just as Talon and Roan helped Anna mount the sleepy dappled gray gelding. Malon was already in the saddle on her fat old pony, trotting in restless circuits around them, shouting encouragement. Anna flashed him a nervous smile, tugging at the hem of her skirts to no effect whatever. They weren't made for riding, so even carefully tucked and spread under her, the pink ruffles just barely brushed past her knees.

“Don’t be scared - Pepper is a good horse. He’ll teach you everything,” said Rajo, inspecting the tack as Talon shortened Anna’s stirrups again. “I didn't know your stockings had roses - did you knit them in or stitch them on top?”

Anna blushed, and Roan punched his arm. “A _gentleman_ doesn't comment on a lady’s underwear, brother.”

“Stockings aren’t underwear,” he said, satisfied all the straps lay properly snug. “Anyways why bother making them fancy if she didn't want people to notice?”

Anna blushed and stuck her tongue out at him. “You’re one to talk, wearing half your jewelry hidden all the time.”

Rajo stuck his tongue out at her and rolled up his sleeves so the topaz studding his silver wristlets glittered in the bright afternoon sunlight. It felt better anyway, soaking in the summer sunlight.

Talon laughed at them all, and showed Anna how to get Pepper’s attention, and walk him in circles behind Malon to learn the feeling of how to guide him. Roan mounted his buckskin mare with easy grace just as Ingo brought out the big black for him.

Roan proposed a race at once - Malon didn't even wait for him to mount before she declared the orchard as their goal and cried “Ready-Set-Go!” She kicked her pony into his ridiculous scurrying run. Pepper followed him at a fast walk, keeping an ear trained on his novice rider.

Roan followed them both, managing to persuade Boots into a parade-ground piaffe about halfway to the gate. Anna laughed at them and tried to copy Roan’s position to Pepper’s great amusement. He sidled towards Boots and showed off his own long-practiced form, goading her to pull ahead of Malon and her pony to try and outdo him.

Soot complained as Rajo took his time getting settled - she wanted to run with the others. He held her back all the way through the gate, though she tossed her head and sidled and generally acted a brat. He gave her leave to pace a bit, pulling her up again next to Anna.

“Well,” he said, glancing at her sidelong. “Do you want to win?”

“Oh - I don't know how I should manage any faster than this,” she said, brushing stray hair out of her eyes. “I don't know what I'm even doing now.”

“Leave the details to Pepper,” he said, patting Soot’s neck indulgently. “Adjust your position exactly as I tell you, and don't lock up. You’ll only have trouble if you let yourself be frightened. I’ll be right beside you, so if you forget, you can just look at how I’m riding, ok?”

Anna bit her lip, but she nodded, and listened carefully. Pepper eyed him and snorted - he’d trained hundreds of novice riders, and clearly disapproved of this method. Nonetheless, he obeyed, stretching his legs to match Soot’s loping stride. Anna leaned into the wind, laughing.

This was how life should always be.

Rajo whistled to Roan, pulling up just as they reached the shadow of the first apple tree. Boots peeled away from the main path neatly, looping back under Roan’s confident hand to ride at his left, behind Anna. Pepper slowed his step, anticipating the next command, but didn't actually drop to a pace until Rajo managed to remind Anna how to ask him to.

Malon caught up to them as they passed the tall gateposts marking the old boundary of the orchard, not at all sore to have lost the race. She cheered for Anna’s victory, weaving her pony through the trees to reclaim her place at the lead.

Anna slowed Pepper to a walk all on her own, praising the old gelding far in excess of his efforts. She turned him about, red-cheeked and breathless. “Did I do alright? I couldn't even think, he ran so fast!”

Roan shot him a Look.

“Told you Pepper is a good horse,” said Rajo, ignoring him. “A little more practice and you’ll be ready to take Soot over the hunt circuit.”

Roan made a rude noise. “You want _fast_ , you should see _us_ tear up the field. Soot may be the better jumper, but Boots can outrun the wind.”

“Jumping sounds dangerous,” said Anna, stroking Pepper’s neck as he edged off the path to sniff around for fallen apples.

“Oh, it is,” said Roan, clicking at Boots and standing to survey the orchard.

Rajo didn't bother following his line of sight - he’d _built_ half the obstacles in the orchard. He caught Pepper’s spare lead just in time to keep him from rearing when Roan whooped and kicked Boots directly into a reckless gallop.

Anna gasped and Malon cheered as Roan raced through the trees, his form drillfield perfect as Boots sailed over hummocks and roots and forgotten crates.

“Don't worry,” said Rajo, trying to soothe two annoyed horses at once. “He knows what he’s doing. Watch - see how he helps her balance?”

“You do _that_ when you skip lessons to come out here?” Anna half-whispered, covering her mouth with one hand.

Rajo shrugged. “Sometimes. It's easier to think out here. Anyways riding is good exercise.”

Anna shook her head as Roan vanished over the crest of the hill. “Maybe for the horse. I hope you didn't spend a lot of money to borrow Pepper for me-”

Rajo made a rude noise and kneed Soot forward, releasing Pepper’s lead. “Talon may be country people, and lazy, but he’s not _vulgar_. And riding is too work - talking with your horse, moving with them. Walking isn't hard to sit, but anything else makes you sore after a while. Especially trotting. But today won't be that long. We have to head back with the evening deliveries anyway.”

“Oh,” said Anna, as if she’d almost forgotten about Castletown too. “Do you think - I mean. If you wouldn't mind too much maybe I could - I don't want to be a bother or anything-”

Rajo stared at her. Anna never stuttered like this. Maybe she needed to rest. “Don't worry so much. There’s a quiet pond ahead, where Roan went. You’ll like it - we can let the horses drink before we finish the loop around the ranch.”

“You don't have to stop because of me,” she said with a sigh. “I just - it's nice here. I don't want you to fall behind in your lessons but - I'm glad you showed me this wonderful place.”

“Pfft. I’d have stolen you sooner but your Da’s kinda stupid,” said Rajo.


	12. Chapter 12

Cicadas sang them along as afternoon gave way to twilight. They stood on the western ridge to watch the sunset, eating tart young apples and talking about nothing. Malon started yawning, so Rajo tied her pony’s lead to Pepper’s saddle and persuaded her to ride with him for the way back, mostly by promising to bring her a whole bag of sugarblooms on his next visit. 

All three of them had to help Anna into the saddle again, to her great embarrassment. So Rajo used a little magic to loosen the cinch when Roan went to mount, dumping him flat on his back in the grass. Roan swore fearsomely, but it amused everyone else, including Boots. 

Roan laughed at him in turn when Malon fell asleep in his arms not even a quarter hour down the road, but Rajo didn't mind. It was good to be under the open sky in the hours of melancholy.

“So is Vah Farticus still crazy?” Roan asked when their idle conversations ebbed.

Anna tsk’d at him for being rude.

“Some days are ok,” said Rajo with a shrug. “Brother Mikaem helps him remember things. He wrote yesterday’s hymn backwards though, which  _ would _ be a pretty funny spell to cast if I knew how.”

“He wrote the words in the wrong order or the letters?” Roan asked, baffled.

“Both,” said Rajo with a grin. “Nobody said  _ anything _ , even though we could all see it was wrong, until Kamenus asked Lor and Halen to recite it as an antiphon.”

Roan snickered.

Anna spoke softly. “You did  _ tell _ them it wasn't your fault this time?”

“Why bother?” Rajo shrugged, careful not to unbalance Malon. “Even when Mikaem knows better, he’s not going to upset Kamenus.”

“The truth is important,” said Anna. “Anyways, what good does it do you or anyone if your whole class goes on thinking you can reach inside people’s heads like that?”

“Well, maybe they’ll think twice before throwing pebbles at Gerudo thieves for fun,” said Rajo, setting his jaw and wishing the weird old journal held that sort of spell in it.  _ Useful _ magic.

Roan made a rude noise. “Sure, if they were smart. Did Mikaem ever find that cup you were supposed to have stolen?”

“It was a  _ chalice _ , little brother, and yes. Locked in the glass cabinet right where Kamenus always puts it. But it doesn't count because now it only has six gems.”

Anna frowned. “But offering chalices  _ always _ have six gems. Unless you mean a different one for foreign spirits?”

“No, it's the same one I told you about,” said Rajo. “I don't mind though because everyone already knows  _ that's _ crazy. Even Mikaem was half convinced I’d replaced the diadem stones with glass until Halen suggested they ask a jeweler.”

“Did he apologize?” Anna bit her lip as she asked, worried for no reason.

Rajo nudged Soot to pick up her pace just a little as Malon’s pony tried to pull them towards the hedges along the road. “It doesn't matter. I’d rather spend class in the library half the time anyway so it's not like it's much of a punishment when he thinks I've switched his stuff around again.” 

Roan hummed and hrrrmed as they ambled along the old road. “That  _ would _ be a really good spell. None of your uncle’s books have anything like it?”

Rajo shook his head. “Voh doesn't keep hardly anything that's not carpentry plans and computation tables and farmer stuff. He bought one last week that’s got nothing in it but how to grow trees - as if anything is going to make that stupid oak behind the house less pathetic.”

“No, I mean your  _ other _ uncle. Da’s brother,” said Roan with drawn out syllables and a meaningful stare. “His  _ notebooks _ and stuff?”

Rajo frowned. Link never mentioned a brother, so he must have died in the war too. Maybe he had witchblood on both sides after all. “If you mean that old journal, no. It's got a lot of stuff about stars and like, firestarting and weather watching. But it's a scrambled mess, not a proper book at all. Also the scribe was lazy with blotting powder and trimmed their quill too fat.”

Roan rolled his eyes and leaned back to catch Anna’s eye. “Is he always this stupid?”

“If by stupid you mean stubborn,” she said with a sly grin.

Rajo frowned harder, wrapping his arm tighter around Malon as she started to slump sideways in her sleep. “So there’s more than one.”

“Uh, _yeah_. Like, dozens. Ensren found most of them years ago,” Roan began, trailing off as Anna squeaked and flailed ineffectually, trying to keep Pepper from spooking at nothing.

Rajo ground his teeth and cast a little coil of shadow around Pepper’s eyes to calm him down. He stopped in the middle of the road, knees locked in terror. Next time he would insist Anna wear trousers and practice the basic commands for at least an hour before riding out. 

“Sorry,” said Anna, shamefaced. “I remember what you said about no worrying, but I forgot for a moment when you - when your eyes did that  _ thing _ . I didn't mean to.”

“It's fine,” lied Rajo as he pulled around her other side so she could ride between them when Pepper was calm enough to unravel the shadow again. He pushed down the bitterness, locking it away with all the rest. It wasn't their fault. It didn't have anything to do with them. They couldn't possibly understand. Rajo waited until Pepper stopped trembling, and summoned three little balls of light, lofting them into the air over the road so the horses could see a little better on the last stretch. 

“I'm sorry too,” said Roan with a sigh as they got underway again. “I probably messed up your surprise. I didn't think about it - Ensren said in his last letter he was working on a translation after the twins were in bed and he found a loose map stuck in the middle. It’s marked to go with a journal, but not any Voh left at the farm, so he asked me to look, is all.”

“It's fine,” said Rajo again, telling himself firmly to believe it. Maybe Link didn't think it was important. Or maybe he couldn't bear to see the books, or maybe he still thought Rajo was too little for important things. Anyways, everyone had secrets. 

“Hey,” said Roan quietly after a good furlong of silence. “Are we - you know - telling Da about this?”

Rajo glanced at Anna - she pretended not to be listening, but he knew better. Not that it mattered. He’d laid these plans weeks ago, knowing her father would probably snitch anyway. “Sure. Except the milk -  _ that _ needs to stay secret until Woolsday.”

“What milk? Why?” Roan frowned at him.

“Don't be stupid. For your Da,” said Rajo. “I talked Ellon into selling some - but you gotta help me hide it when we get back.”

Anna gasped, pulling Pepper to a halt. “No - you bought  _ Romani _ milk? You could get arrested-!  _ Ellon _ could get arrested!”

“Only if somebody snitches, which you better not,” said Rajo, keeping Soot firmly on the path. “Anyways, it's a stupid law, and it's not like  _ I _ was ever going to drink it anyway. Gross.”

Roan swore, kneeing Boots ahead to block the road. “And  _ how _ are we going to get it across town without the watch noticing?”

“Easy. We use the roof,” said Rajo, letting Soot stop. “Ellon helped with my hand so we can use the good shortcut.”

“If anyone finds out I helped you smuggle booze, I’ll be  _ expelled _ ,” said Roan, wild-eyed. “Do you understand? Whipped and expelled! In disgrace!”

“Shh- you’ll wake Malon,” said Rajo. 

“ _Disgrace-!_ ” whispered Roan.

“Why couldn't she just sell it to Voh in town? On Woolday I mean, with the regular delivery,” said Anna quietly, bringing Pepper closer alongside of him.

Rajo snorted. “The King gets first refusal on every batch - that's why nobody ever has much to sell. Might work for weaseling away  _ one _ bottle. Wouldn't last an hour. Birthdays have to be  _ special _ .”

“Oh,” said Anna, staring across the quiet fields. “I've never seen it. Is it - does it still  _ look _ like milk?”

“Who cares? No one is going to believe the walking library couldn't read the label  _ or _ miscounted two hundred rupees worth for  _ normal _ milk,” said Roan. 

“But does it?” Anna insisted.

“Maybe,” said Rajo, trying to remember what the bottles looked like. “I think the glass is white, anyway.”

“So change the labels,” she said with a shrug, not meeting his eye. “People see what they expect to see.”

 

_**\- o - O - o -** _

 

Ellon wouldn't let them climb into the delivery wagon until they all had a proper meal, which meant they were all so stuffed on sausage pie and cheese curds it was hard to stay awake on the trip back into town. Rajo persuaded Anna to let herself nap, though she only surrendered when he made her admit she couldn't see the lace well enough to be sure of the pattern. She could see fireflies next time.

The guard at the wicket gate didn't even pretend to inspect the wagon. They waited for the right moment, slipping into the shadows of the east market without waking the guard there either. Rajo and Roan carried the precious milk and Anna’s little workbasket between them. She bit her nails every time someone walked down a cross-street, but no one noticed them, even when the gate squeaked. 

Rajo offered a lazy salute to the windows with the lanterns in them, and Roan bowed over Anna’s hand with such perfect gallantry she turned pink as her dress and fled as soon as he let go, forgetting her workbasket. Roan snickered, and Rajo set the basket safely inside the fence, under the flowering memoryleaf. 

In the end they took the long way home, as the crate proved far too unwieldy for iron ladders and too heavy for leaping eaves. Only two grownups tried to stop them, neither one part of the watch. Both believed Roan’s wild explanations easily, though neither resembled truth or reason in the slightest. 

Rajo kept his face averted, and mumbled look-away spells from the moment they stepped down from the wagon. He couldn't hold the bubble over all three of them very long, but thinned down to a tiny sphere stretching from fingertips to crown, he just barely held the magic over himself to the edge of their own mean little street.

The upstairs window was dark, but soft yellow light threw the weave of the front curtains against the sad little fence screening the door. Rajo stood on his toes to peer around the edges between the curtains. The front room looked empty, but Roan offered to go first and create a distraction, just in case. 

Rajo wasn't at all sure he could get the crate upstairs alone without noise or disaster. Holding the magic that long had proven much harder than he expected - but he had to get the Romani Milk hidden somehow before his strength gave out. 

Roan pushed through the door with a sing-song ‘hullo~’, signaling that the front room was in fact empty. He slammed the door against the frame to make it sound closed, careful not to let the latch set, and stomped about. He made the first stair squeal as he called for Link, and banged the pantry door when he looked in there. Roan was sometimes quite stupid. No answering call came. The stubborn squeak of the kitchen doors carried, and the Roan’s helpless laughter. 

He didn't signal Rajo to enter, but he was giggling so maybe he couldn't. Rajo listened so hard he thought his ears might pop, and faintly, under Roan’s helpless laughter, Link’s deeper voice. What could be so funny in the kitchen?

Rajo decided to see if the firewood cabinet under the lowest stairs would fit the crate - usually Link moved the cords outside in spring so the spiders wouldn't get too bad. The whole house smelled funny - but he couldn't quite place why. That door did  _ not _ squeak - but the hinges made it so the crate wouldn't fit without tipping it, so Rajo sucked a tight breath and cast a little tiny gust of wind to clear the spiderwebs. He unloaded the precious bottles, one after the other, just barely getting the last one wedged in place as Roan started hiccuping from too much laughing. The empty crate he shoved under one padded bench, where the shadows and old blankets would hide it for a little while. Roan must have heard it scrape the floor - he leaned heavily on one kitchen door, wiping tears from his eyes.

Rojo opened the other onto a different sort of disaster entirely. Link stood in the middle of it, reddened hands propped on narrow hips, shaking his head. A precarious stack of flat slices of burned somethings stood on the tiny worktable next to a scorched pot with bubbly gunk leaking out from under the lid. The dry sink overflowed with dishes and bottles. Worse than that, though, was the astringent vinegary smell, and the shards of green glass and limp vegetables exploding out of the cabinet next to the stove. 

And crowning the whole of it, on top of the now-cold stove, a lopsided, oozing lump of half-burned, sugar-dusted dough.

“Was that supposed to be-” Rajo whispered to Roan.

“Cake-!” Roan gasped, dissolving into giggles again.


	13. Chapter 13

In the end, they let the chickens clean up the exploded pickles and burned flatbread. The cake, Rajo cut to pieces and dumped into the last clean pot with sweet cream and honey and strawberries. They ate it for breakfast with spoons, and lazed away the morning in the garden while the spiced meat simmered on the stove. 

Roan fell asleep in the middle of a third game of skip-stone, so Link made another pot of brambleflower and goldenleaf tea, mixing a glass for Rajo with milk and honey to cut the bitterness of the green potion he brought out with it.

“Is it that obvious?” Rajo grumped, trying to touch the stuff to his tongue as little as possible.

Link sat beside him on the padded bench, half-lotus fashion, and folded his hands over one knee. His gray trousers needed mending again, but he never seemed to notice that about his own clothing. “Not very. What did you need so much magic for yesterday?”

“A project,” said Rajo with a shrug. It was mostly true. “Also I taught Anna how to ride, and I had to make sure everything would be perfect.”

Link smiled, but his eyes were sad. “It is a good thing to have friends. Things are better this year?”

Rajo shrugged. “Some of the other boys are going into apprenticeships this year, and one of the girls. Master Budro caught me drawing in class again though, so I have to design some stupid moving bridge in miniature that  _ works _ for the harvest exposition or he’s going to fail me for the term. Again.”

“You’ll come up with something,” said Link, looking away, towards the woven rose screens with their tiny, fragile white blooms. “Do you want me to find you an apprenticeship, Rajo? The architect-”

“Who would hire a thief to build anything?” Rajo drained his glass of tea and licked honey from the rim. It wasn't the normal stuff, or the clover or apple blossom honey. This was the special, rare, subtle sweetness which tasted sublime in the way the dirt in Ma Idrea’s garden smelled after a gentle rain. Rajo wasn't sure where Link even bought it. 

“A master locksmith must know how to pick locks,” said Link with a shrug. “I could make inquiries in other cities - Termina, or Exolla, or Labrynna City, or Castor-”

“Why bother? I’m already over halfway through my studies here, so I’d only lose time going anywhere else and having to convince people all over again that I learned anything ever. Anyways Roan is here now, and Hyrule has the best military academy of anyone,” said Rajo, pouring himself more tea.

Link sighed and pushed a hand through his fair hair. Rajo never saw him cut it, but it never got any longer either. “And after you graduate? After you are confirmed at the temple of Light?”

Rajo shrugged, tipping milk slowly into his tea and watching it make swirling stormclouds. “Where will you go, when the new walls and towers are finished?”

“That depends,” said Link, folding his hands around his knee again. 

“On?” Rajo insisted, scooping barkspice and more of the rare honey into his cup.

“You,” said Link quietly. 

Rajo made a rude noise and tasted his concoction. Perfectly sharp and sweet and savory and smooth all at once. “That's stupid. What are we even waiting for then? Don't you want to go home?”

“Yes,” said Link after a long silence.

“So let’s go,” said Rajo with a shrug. “Roan is actually good at school. He doesn't need our help to be a fancy officer. Anyways he already has to live there whenever it’s not a holiday, and nobody on the road to the farm is going to be stupid enough to give a blonde cadet trouble when he’s in uniform, which is basically always.”

Link just shook his head no and sucked his lip between his teeth.

Rajo sighed. “Why do we have to stay until I get some stupid piece of paper to tell people what I can do? You just said I could stop going if I become an apprentice like the others, so-”

“Do you  _ want _ to learn a trade?” Link asked, studying him sidelong. “Any trade. It doesn't have to be what I do.”

“Not really,” admitted Rajo.

Link shrugged. “Then you stay in school.”

“What if I never want to learn any stupid trade? What if,” said Rajo, stirring his tea to watch the tempest form upside down. “What if I don't even graduate? Will you make me study maps and dusty old kings and stupid buildings and the best ways to build farms and write contracts until I'm old and decrepit like Vah Kamenus?”

“Is that what you want to do?” Link tilted his head a little to the side. He actually sounded serious. 

“Of course not,” said Rajo, licking his spoon clean while his tea settled again. “But - what if I did?”

“You used to hate Castletown. You’d ask me every Lightsday, how much longer until we could leave,” said Link after a long silence. “What changed?”

“Nothing changed,” said Rajo, rolling his eyes. “All of Hyrule is impossibly stupid and I hate this rotten city most of all. I just want to know.”

Link frowned at him, chewing his lip. “Then I guess I would find other work after the walls are done and you would stay in school for as long as it takes.”

“As long as it takes for  _ what _ ?” asked Rajo, setting the spoon back on the silver tray. “How am I supposed to become whatever it is you brought me here for if you never tell me what it is?”

Link sighed, glancing at Roan, still fast asleep on a pile of cushions beside the gaming board. “It's complicated.”

“I'm not a baby,” Rajo groaned in frustration. “Why should it even matter to you what I do when I'm grownup? I don't spark by accident anymore, but that's not enough. Nothing is  _ ever _ enough-”

“Rajo-” Link began, but Rajo couldn't bear to hear that crack in his voice a moment longer. 

A stray cloud shaded the little house as Rajo fled inside. He felt sick to his stomach and heavy as stone. The creak of floorboards and stairs under his feet seemed like the snap and growl of hungry wolfos, and the roaring inside his own chest threatened to tear his throat out. He wanted to pull the magic into his horrible selfish heart until it burned away the pain. He wanted silence, but he didn't want to think. He wanted none of this to have ever happened - and he hated the cold heaviness of trying so hard not to  _ wish _ . 

“Din’s merciful fires,” swore Link in the beautiful, strange language of the Gerudo women. “Rajo-!”

Rajo slammed his door shut and tried to throw the bolt. The moment he laid his hand upon the steel though, his vision flared red and the room spun. So he leaned against the door reciting the first chant he could wrap his tongue around. It almost never actually banished the red and black shards at the edges of everything, or the incomprehensible whispering wickedness buzzing in his ears. If he could focus, if he wasn't tired, sometimes he could keep it from getting worse. But mostly he had to wait for the storm to pass.

When he was little, the storms and the whispering voices mostly came in his dreams. After the fire, they got worse, until it was hard to even sleep at all unless he was so tired he couldn't help it. Every year after, they grew stronger. Now they came for him in the daytime, and not one of the books in Van Kamenus’ library told him how to make them stop. The light priests  _ liked _ dreams of prophecy. They did all sorts of spells and made offerings to hundreds of little spirits to bring dreams on purpose.

Rajo hated dreaming. 

“Open the door Rajenaya - merciful mother of sands  _ not now _ \- please - not again,” said Link through the door, foreign words rolling off his tongue as easily as the Hylian. “Talk to me - don't lock me out this time -”

Rajo pressed all his strength against the door from the inside as Link drummed his fist on the wood. He fumbled through another recitation, trying also to listen to Gerudo curses leveled at him and the gods and everyone at the same time. He didn't understand all of them - Hylians didn't teach the Gerudo tongues the way they taught Zora or Goron, or even Labrynnan or Holodrun. But Vah Kamenus had books on almost everything, and sometimes Rajo managed to persuade Mikaem to borrow others from the Royal Archive. 

Rajo fumbled another line when Link sobbed, lumping his weight against the door from the outside so the latch shuddered with the strain. Hylian men didn't cry.  _ Link _ didn't cry. Not really. Certainly not so anyone might notice, and he never even admitted to his eyes leaking, ever.

Rajo sighed, closing his eyes and pushing back against the storm as hard as he could. He tried to remember the serene faces of the statues in the great temple complex, and the soft, soothing colors of the processional frescoes and the jewel-box glass in the shrines of the venerable saints. The storms never seemed to come into the holy precinct after him, so perhaps he could trick them by imagining himself there, at the heart of the strength of Light.

Everyone said the Temple of Time at the highest point inside the walls of the vast holy precinct was surely the most beautiful of all. They said it stood over the place where the golden gods themselves laid their blessing upon the world. Rajo imagined its stark white stone surrounding him, the soaring windows of etched and mirrored glass amplifying the sunlight to blinding radiance. 

He shivered, feeling the same eerie chill from looking at the empty stone altar and vast ornamented gates to the inner sanctum in his head as he always felt in person. The whispering voices laughed at him. Rajo opened his eyes to the familiar warmth of his own room bathed in comfortable golden light. Half of every book about understanding omens and dreams was about how to find them. No book ever mentioned how to keep the dreams from finding  _ him _ .

“I don't know how to make it stop,” said Rajo, hating how small his own voice sounded against the noise in his head. 

“Let me help,” said Link through the door, tears blurring his words. “Please.”

Rajo ground the heel of his palm against his aching eyes and stepped away from the door. “It's not locked.”

Link pushed through at once and swept Rajo into his arms as if he weren’t within a couple hands of Link’s height, as if he weighed no more than Malon or Taedra.  He wept into Rajo’s hair, babbling nonsense in two languages, and he clutched Rajo so tight to his chest it was hard to breathe. 

The voices hissed as they always did before the storm broke, and in the far distance, thunder trembled. Summer often brought rain here, but rarely so close to solstice. Now he began to wonder if his own curse reached into the skies to summon tempests in earnest - and if the weather magics could be used to predict the storms inside his head too. 

“It's ok,” said Rajo as the black and red spots faded, leaving the usual headache behind. “I can  _ stand _ fine - you - you can put me down now-”

“Sorry,” said Link with a sniffle, setting him back on his own feet slowly. He smoothed down flyaway curls and straightening his waistcoat for him. “I just - I was afraid - I don't want to - I mean, it's not  _ really _ fine, is it?”

Rajo couldn't meet his eye. “No.”

Link wrapped his callused hands around Rajo’s shoulders. “I can’t help if I don’t know what’s wrong. Why are you so upset? Talk to me, Jojo.”

“Why should I?  _ You _ never tell me anything,” Rajo groaned.

Link shook his head, baffled. “I can’t answer questions you don’t ask.”

Rajo ground his teeth, staring a hole in the gouged floorboards. What could he say? How could he wrap words around the chaos in his heart? “Five years ago, you gave me an old notebook. You said it would help.”

Link drew a deep breath and scrubbed his hand over his face. “I hoped.”

“Why?” asked Rajo, searching Link’s face for truth. “Where did it come from? How did you know it was about the kind of magic I can do? How did you get it?”

Link sniffled, releasing Rajo and swallowing hard to try and stop the tears. “I - had a brother once. Sortof. A long, long time ago. When he - after he died, I collected his things and put them in a safe place. I didn’t know what most of it was, I just - I thought it might be important, the things he read, and wrote. When you started to have trouble with the lightning, I remembered - he used to love sun gems. I thought maybe when he was little, he might have had trouble too, and I didn’t understand back then. Maybe he wrote about it. So I looked through his books, until I found that one.”

“And you bought all that topaz,” said Rajo, reflexively touching the cabochon on the largest triangular ear-dangle. Of all the gems he wore to help control the lightning, that’s the one Link reached for sometimes, like it reminded him of something he didn’t really want to remember, but couldn’t stop either.

“Yeah,” said Link, his blue eyes shining with more tears. “I’ve been looking for others, but - it’s hard. The things he wrote - some of the things - I just don’t - I don’t want to make anything worse. I want to help. But I don’t understand a lot of the things in his books. And it’s hard, remembering. Reading some of the things he - well. I’m not as brave as everyone thinks I am. I asked Ensren to help.”

Rajo felt sick again. Of  _ course _ he didn’t tell Rajo there were more, because it hurt him to read through to find the ones that mattered. Whatever he did, it was always wrong and horrid. How could he be so awful, getting angry that Link didn’t show him all the books that made him sad? He should have held his stupid tongue - but it ran ahead of him, pouring out another question before he could stop himself. “Did the bad magic kill him too?”

Link nodded, opening and closing his mouth three times before he could make any words came out. “He took the bad magic into his heart, and held it there so we could - so it wouldn’t get any stronger before we could - so it could be sealed again. But it wasn’t enough. And he - and lots of people died.”

“They called you the hero,” said Rajo, almost certain he knew the truth hidden in Link’s silence this time. The gods gave him such a cruel task, killing someone he loved to break the power of the magic inside him and save his country, only to rip away all meaning in their sacrifice when they let the evil escape again. Of course he wouldn’t ever let himself love anyone else after that, lest the gods destroy them too. How could he be so _selfish_? What was wrong with him, with his cursed dreams and his stupid witchblood?

“They lied,” Link shook his head, looking at his empty, callused hands. “A hero saves everyone.”

Rajo turned, looking at his room through the haze of pain. The faded weavings. The fragrant wooden screens. The smooth, elegant pottery. The shelves of old and rare books on philosophy and spirits and plants and stars and machines and important buildings. Worn old rugs with Gerudo patterns. A priceless telescope, and the set of jewelers’ loupes. “These things, that didn’t come from the farm, the things you gave me when we came here. You said I didn’t have to like them. We could sell them, you said, and get different things. Like it didn’t matter at all. But it did. It does. Because these - were all his.”

“Sorry,” whispered Link. “Not very good at gifts.”

“Better than me,” said Rajo with a sigh. He didn’t know how to make Link understand that was the opposite of what he meant. “I hid your present under the stairs. I only bought it because it’s expensive and kinda rare, and I didn’t have any better ideas.”

Link sniffled. “It’s early but - the things I sent for are here. So. Come.”

Rajo followed him across the little landing to Link’s stark room. Even after six years he kept nothing for himself but a clothespress, a writing table by the window, a bench for pulling his boots on, his bed, one lantern, and his banded blue chest. He didn’t even hang his plain sword here like he did when he lived in the barnloft at the farm. 

Link opened the blue chest and drew from it a heavy bundle which was almost certainly books. The bed creaked when he laid its weight on the blankets and returned for an enormous shapeless parcel and a much smaller jewel casket. Rajo sat on the edge of the bed to unwrap the books, unsurprised to find almost all of them handwritten, with nonsense strings of letters and numbers on the spines instead of proper titles. In the middle of the pile he found a letter in Ensren’s backslant hand detailing a suggested order of study, and notes on the three printed ones. 

Rajo opened the two small ones with the plain covers first - both in Old High Hylian, the type set distractingly off true. But - the notes in the margins through the first few chapters very nearly matched the handwriting in the first journal. “These have the crest of the royal house inside.”

Link sat down next to him to see, his face drawn and pale. More pale than usual. “I thought these were old - but that’s -  Zelda wrote this -”

Rajo made a rude noise. “They _are_ old. Look at the paper - the stitches. The way the ink splotched and cracked here at the edge of the letters. They were still using wood to carve printing blocks sometimes a few hundred years ago, but not with gummy ink like this.”  

“Oh,” said Link, folding his hands in his lap.

“Yeah. So a crown princess from a long time ago, not Crown Princess Zelda, just  _ a _ Zelda, wrote this,” he said, flipping pages. “Or at least she paid someone to write it, and this sorry cover is just because the original one fell apart. So it might be missing pages.”

“Sorry,” said Link.

“No - it’s fine,” said Rajo, setting both aside. “Old books are like that, it doesn’t make them bad. Just - hard. In a good way. I like hard books - they usually have better stuff inside.”

“Oh,” said Link, hanging his head. “I don’t - I’ve never read very much. Just a few things. Things I had to read. I didn’t learn until - until I was older. That big one - that was given to me, a long time ago. But I - I’m just a stupid soldier. I tried, but never could read much of it. It has pictures though.”

“Stupid people can’t build complicated things,” Rajo frowned, peeking inside to see what kind of picturebook gave Link so much trouble. His heart stopped when the light reflected on real gold leaf and expensive cochineal lacquer and shiny night-black ink unlike any he’d seen before. _Pictures_ he called them! These were halfway to being religious icons. “This - I can’t quite read it either. But I know that symbol. And this is the Gerudo script, but it’s so loopy and it’s like they skipped letters - but not because the scribe was lazy. This book was printed - a whole page carved on one block. Why would they do that?”

“It’s called the  Book of the Sands ,” said Link quietly. “I thought you might - maybe you will like it. Or at least know what it’s for. Or maybe it will help you. I don’t know. I am not good at-”

“It’s fine,” Rajo closed the book again and reached for the large parcel. “I told you. I  _ like _ hard books. If reading books was a trade, I could do that. But I don’t think I can be a priest, and I don’t want to work for the stupid old King either.”

Link laughed at that, short and sharp. “You could run a book shop, as long as you never had to actually  _ sell _ any of your treasures.”

Rajo made a rude noise, snapping the thin string holding the cloth around the odd shape inside. The parcel made a twangy sound in his hands - he tore the rest of the cloth away in a fever. The polished amberwood cittern looked more like a confection than an instrument, but touching the delicate wire strings sounded like fairy bells and the stream in the far pasture by the wool-washing shed and everything that a hymn of the holy Light wasn’t.

“Well,” said Link.

“I - don’t know how to play it,” whispered Rajo, caressing the elegant curves.

“We can fix that,” whispered Link with a lopsided smile. 


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T-5

Winter mornings in Hyrule always began with fog, and all too often with misting rain - or worse, sleet. Miserable stuff in the city, souring moods and heaping difficulty on anyone required to work out-of-doors or humor the snappishness of those who didn't. Trade was bad this year - the Zora increased both tariff and toll on their smooth, sculpted roads, and the Goron had closed their borders to humans. Again.

As prices rose, so did banditry. Fully a third of the army patrolled the southern and western borders, and still raiders slipped through. Rajo refused to allow either to disrupt his plans. Bad enough they couldn't go home for the winter holiday this year either.

Roan didn't mind - or at least pretended not to. Every season that rolled past made him more like his Hylian classmates. He moved like them, he spoke like them. Only in little moments and secret intrigues did his own easy brilliance shine more strongly. But at least he didn't ask Rajo to follow his example.

Anna didn't either. She worried about the smallest and stupidest of things, but she never tried to make him into something he could never be. He could hide his hair under a hood, but he could no longer hide his height under the lie of three extra years to his history. He could wear a mask when he needed to go out at night, and fool stupid townsfolk into mistaking him for any number of terrifying things, but he couldn't display virtue enough to persuade bigots to set aside their hatred and trust a long-nosed bastard thief in broad daylight.

But now he’d won three harvest faire prizes for his mechanical designs and the King himself had selected his treatise on the nature and habits of lesser demons to be added to the royal archive. Vah Mikaem helped him secure two anonymous commissions for further research on demons, and Master Budro moved him from the fountain project to designing and casting new gate and lift mechanisms and dynamic locks for the prison.

Vah Kamenus did not approve of his interests, but he’d burned the draft of the fairy book in front of all the temple students as rank heresy last solstice, so it was his own fault, really. Anyways, everybody preferred to read things that agreed with them, and no one with a good reputation wanted to ruin it in becoming familiar with such miserable things.

Except, apparently, the Crown Princess. He knew something interesting must have happened when Vah Mikaem came to the library, shaking and sweating, and made him take the book of Light Hymns. That both the book and the note within it bore the seal of the royal family in the watermark sealed it as certain.

Which is precisely why he needed Ellon’s help getting into the castle. Talon managed the deliveries at night, when the castle guard tripled and the outer walls swarmed with kesse and chu and stal. Ellon handled the morning deliveries, and worked on her broadloom in town while she sold the day’s remaining stock. He merely had to persuade her, as stowing away in her wagon at seven feet tall had become vanishingly impossible, even with layered look-away spells.

Rajo strode through the murk with his head bowed, checking every alley and shadowed door with a little seeking cantrip as he went. He wasn't surprised to note a thief on the slate roof of a brightly painted townhouse, but she let him pass without interference. He decided to leave her to her work for now - if she got caught, the guard would leverage her trespass as cause to push foreigners ever harder. But as she had already thwarted the walls and watch so far, it hardly seemed sporting to scare her back to the desert without letting her even _try_ to fleece her mark yet.

The bright shop-bell ahead trembled gently under a little thread of magic. Ellen had the door unlatched by the time he reached her, and ushered him through at once. He ducked under the painted lintel, teasing her for shrinking in her old age.

Ellon locked the door again before she answered. “You should mind the curfew with as much effort as you put into giving me gray hairs.”

“Hn. Where’s the fun in that? Curfew is easy to mind,” said Rajo, stretching languidly and slapping a carved rafter above him just because he could. “You know I love a challenge almost as much as you.”

“Layabout rascal,” said Ellon with a shake of her head. “Hang your cloak and have a seat then. Anna’s present will be done when it's done, and you fussing about making improvements to the draw harness will only make it take longer.”

Rajo rolled his eyes. “I didn’t come about the present or the loom. Not really. But I was thinking about the drawings you make for your weaving - the little pattern ones, not the big brocades and tapestries. Do you still have the little toy loom threaded?”

“Just because it’s small doesn’t make it a toy,” she said, rolling her eyes at him in turn. But she brought the delicate wooden machine and two little shuttles to the work table anyway.

Rajo hung his sodden cloak and slung his cittern off his back, pleased to see not a single drop of water marred the polished wood. He’d still need to tune it - the water-ward didn’t keep out all the cold, and the fire-ward still needed more tests before he would risk even a cheap instrument to it.

Ellon raised a brow when he set the instrument next to the little loom, but she didn’t look at all surprised when he pulled the book of Light Hymns from under his vest. “I thought this was misprinted at first, but the House of Red Lions would look foolish to approve any book with such obvious flaws, and never mind a holy one. But in certain kinds of light, you can see where the paper is marred from obscuring the _right_ printing, the wrong note being drawn in its place.”

“Certain kinds - you mean witchfire,” grumped Ellon. She looked at the pages though, scanning the music for errors. “I don’t see what this is to do with weaving.”

Rajo turned the book sideways. “If these were blocks on your pattern drawings, instead of notes, what sort of cloth would it make?”

Ellon pulled a face, but she traced her finger over the staff anyway. “That would depend in part on if the slurs and ties should be read as floats and whether each pitch should be its own color. Many such drafts become insensible reduced to only two tones.”

Rajo fanned through pages and plucked his notes from their hiding place. He unfolded the foolscap for her, smoothing it out so the staff read vertically. “None of the wrong notes had slur marks, only holds. Will this make a pattern in only light and shadow?”

Ellon worried her lip between her teeth, considering. “Were any bracketed by repeats?”

Rajo slid the second page out from under the first, where he’d copied in black the markings surrounding each of the wrong red notes.

“Where did you steal this book from anyway? You’re not asking me to scribe some demon spell are you?” She frowned in suspicion, but she’d already begun flipping levers on the side of the little loom. Now, her curiosity would demand the attempt, just as he’d needed to spend the better part of the week trying to find music in the princess’ secret message.

“It was a gift,” he said, shrugging off the barb. She didn’t mean anything by it - just a little joke, born of long habit. The first time he’d hidden in the delivery wagon, Ellon caught him with half a morning’s egg harvest, all of them the rare blue-green ones courtesy of Malon’s generous enthusiasm for her new friend. “She sent it to me through Mikaem, with a little nonsense note inside about looking forward to the amusement of reading a new analysis by a foreign scholar.”

“She,” noted Ellon with an arch look. “Is that all?”

Rajo shrugged, picking up the cittern to tune it while she fussed with setting up the loom. “Everyone knows about Kamenus’ worst student by now.”

“Bad students don’t get awarded royal contracts,” she chided.

“More likely the demon-books are for some fringe faction leader, not the King’s people. Maybe Karakut. Hylians don’t much like the Baron’s darknut warriors,” he said, trying a little glissando to test the sweetness of the strings. “Could be Elapidan. His estate borders both the desert and traditional moblin lands. Or maybe Ordun’s duke - rumor says the mists of lost woods are stretching past the old warning stones in half a hundred places, and people blame everything on demons.”

Ellon made a rude noise, and suggested a common reel for him to play. The tune was ridiculously easy, but it did make for a decent warm-up. And the modified ice-ward in his gloves hadn’t actually worked anyway.

 

**_\- o - O - o -_ **

 

Rajo played song after song for her as she wove and cursed under her breath, pencilling odd little notations on the cipher as she worked. He tried not to get too excited when distinct lines and curves started to form upon the cloth. Until she finished the pattern, it would be foolish to anticipate the design.

So he leaned his back against the table and thought only of the music. He played common, popular tunes and a few of the more sprightly devotional songs, and as many provincial folk ballads as he could remember. When he ran out of those he fooled about with brighter variations on scraps of working songs he’d overheard in the prisons, and drinking songs from the public houses. Link didn’t like to hear some of those, and Ellon chided him for being lewd when she recognized one of the _really_ bawdy ones.

Rajo ran out of other people’s songs before she was done weaving out the cipher. He wanted to peek, but if she got too annoyed with him she might stop altogether and make him wait for the answer. Which certainly wouldn’t put her in any mood to to sneak him into the castle to confront the princess about her strange puzzle.

So he played his own wandering compositions for a while. Some of his sketches - especially early ones - were merely patched together from favorite little phrases or composed of common music turned inside out and backwards. Ellon didn’t say anything about the unfamiliar music at first, but she called the slower melodies ominous.

He sped his fingers through the next one, which sounded silly to his ears, but his longest composition seemed suddenly more intriguing played a third faster than he’d written it. He looped back through the first few phrases, embroidering the theme with sly little arpeggios in minor thirds, losing the thread of _why_ he was playing to the immediacy of creation.

“You can argue with your weird music later,” interrupted Ellon, though despite her fussing she sounded mildly amused. “I’ve one full repeat now if I’ve read the draft in the right order.”

Rajo wound the melody into a bright flourish and turned, setting the cittern on the table as she freed the brake and unrolled the cloth from the front beam. Two symbols repeated from selvedge to selvedge - one which Ellon had no cause whatever to know, for it was an ancient idiogram usually translated as ‘book’.

The other was an abstracted winged circle. The sigil used in high magic for fairies.

“Ellon - I need you to get me into the castle,” he said, his tongue dry as dust.

The Crown Princess wanted to know what _he_ knew about fairies. Somehow she must have learned about his treatise. But the maiden princess was supposed to be the purest heart in all of Hyrule. What could he possibly know about fairies that she didn’t? He’d only seen a handful - wasn’t it said the castle was built over a fairy spring in the ancient days?

“I can’t. The guards are more strict than ever,” she said. “They will hurt you when they catch you-”

“Let me worry about that,” he said, fanning through the book of hymns for the original note. As if that would tell him anything he hadn’t puzzled over a hundred times already.

“Anjo - they’ll throw you in the dungeon if you fight them, and you know it,” said Ellon, laying a gentle hand on his arm. “And that’s if the king is merciful. You know how harsh he’s punished the Gerudo bandits.”

“That’s why I have to see her,” he said, meeting her eyes and willing her to understand. He tried to be careful about wishing, always, but this was _important_. “As soon as possible.”

Yet Ellon shook her head. “It’s too dangerous, no matter how charming your pretty maid might be.”

“She’s not just a maid,” said Rajo, showing her the little note in the Princess’ own hand. She didn’t have to sign it - only royals would write a simple note with that many flourishes.

“Anjo,” she said, rubbing his arm. “You’re old enough to know better than to chase fairy stories. A secret royal summons can’t mean anything good for a boy like you.”

“I’m not afraid,” he said coldly.

“I know,” she sighed. “That’s the problem.”


	15. Chapter 15

Door latches seem a ridiculously simple thing, meriting no notice whatsoever until they fail. Rajo swore, unable to grasp the handle, let alone fit the key in place. If he cast magic now, the temple watchers might notice, and Link almost certainly would. Unless he was drunk.

Rajo breathed a quiet prayer for _all_ of them to be drunk, and spat lightning at the offending mechanism. The iron lockset screamed in protest, but gave way when he leaned against the door.

Link unfortunately proved to be neither drunk nor even asleep, for he caught Rajo as he stumbled into the sorry little house, staggering under his weight. “Merciful Din, _what happened_?”

“Nothing,” lied Rajo, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth to see if his lip was still bleeding. Not that he could really tell. “Just tripped over some cowards on the way home.”

“Don’t _nothing_ at me when I can see the truth bleeding on the floor,” grumped Link, draping Rajo’s more-or-less good arm over his thin shoulders.

It was still strange every time he had to face how much bigger he was than Link. It seemed wrong somehow. Though he’d outgrown the tallest Hylian over two years ago it still unsettled his gut to look _down_ at the man who raised him. Especially like this, when he was demonstrating such immense strength hidden inside his slender frame.

“Most of it’s not mine - just lemme wash up and grab a red potion,” grumbled Rajo. _Why_ did Link have to catch him like this?

Link turned him away from the stairs by main force, dragging him towards the little kitchen instead. “Did the Watch see you fighting?”

“No,” lied Rajo. The whole Hylian army would know soon enough, since at least three of the sorry bastards were off-duty soldiers. He thought he recognized one of them from Roan’s cadre, but smashing his face into the cobbles a few times had fixed that. “What do you care anyway?”

“Don’t be like that,” said Link, leading him in a wide arc around the big braided rug that anchored their benches and tables. “What provoked the boys this time? You weren’t even _at_ the school today-”

“Why do they _ever_ start shit? I exist,” spat Rajo, catching one of the kitchen doors before it could pop back in his face. “You knew this would happen the day you dragged me here.”

“Not like this,” said Link, easing him down onto the wooden bench next to the covered bath and helping him unwind his heavy cloak. “It’s bad this time, Jojo. I should have known you were in trouble again - the dream - I should have-”

“Should have what, _Vohatyr_?” Rajo poured his bitterness into the word, staring mercilessly into Link’s cold blue eyes. “It’s _bad_ every time. Don’t try to feed me fairy tales anymore. I’m not stupid.”

“I know you aren’t,” said Link, shaking his head and helping him untangle himself from the mangled cittern strap. The instrument’s body should have survived the fight under his best shields, though at least two pair of the strings had snapped in the struggle. Link didn’t say a word about it, setting the expensive instrument aside with complete indifference. “You’ll need more healing than a little potion this time Jojo. _Why_ did you have to face them? How did they manage to-? How many of them must have come at you this time? Couldn’t you have-”

“Run like a motherless Hylian coward? Hide under _another_ false name in a faraway place? Drown my past in a bottle like you?” Rajo scoffed. “Do you even _know_ what the townspeople say?”

Link recoiled, grasping the edge of the sink for balance. “What are you talking about?”

“ _Of course_. You don’t know anything,” said Rajo making a shooing motion with his mangled hands and then wishing he hadn’t. “You can’t even _begin_ to understand when you’ve got your perfect stupid face and your perfect little lies and your stupid bottle to hide behind.”

“That isn’t true,” began Link, gathering up a clean cloth in his pale fists.

“Isn’t it? So what _do_ they say, _Vohatyr_ , about your _curious little habits_ , hm? If you know so much,” snarled Rajo, trying to ignore the red shards dancing at the edge of his vision. “Tell me what they think of a man who never ages and sings to his garden in the middle of the night. Who buys enough rotgut to drown a pig but never even looks at a woman twice.”

Link frowned in confusion, pouring water over the cloth and rearranging its folds. “I don’t know, but I will try to fix it.”

“Fix _what_? How can you fix _people_? How can you fix what’s already happened?” Rajo demanded, rocking forward on the bench and trying to ignore how much everything hurt. “If you cared at all none of this would even be happening - but you don’t. You just go on the same way you do every day, talking about fixing things but nothing _important_ ever changes. _Look at you_ \- you don’t even try to defend yourself you shrinking violet.”

“Jojo-” began Link.

“ _Don’t call me that,_ ” shouted Rajo, closing his eyes against the red lightning but it followed him even into the darkness. “How _dare_ you act like everything is fine when the whole town thinks you - that you - _dammit_. Do you even look around you? _How many grown men live alone with a couple boys?_ Even widowers keep a maid or - or family - or a mistress - or _something_. And Hylian men don’t buy silks and jewelry and storybooks.”

“But those weren’t even for me,” stammered Link.

“That _doesn’t_ make it better,” groaned Rajo. “Can’t you understand? Nine years in this _filthy_ country and every season another crop of wagging tongues. They don’t just hate me for my witchblood.”

“I’m sorry,” said Link, his voice cracking.

“ _Sorry_? That’s it? _Sorry_ fixes _nothing_. _Sorry_ isn’t worth two chipped rupee,” shouted Rajo, forcing his eyes open again though the shadows pressed in him from every side and the storm curdled his stomach. “What's your excuse this time? What should we believe of the gutless deserter who couldn't cut it against an army of _girls_? What fairy story will you try to spin now?”

Link choked and shivered, his eyes reddened and glistening with welling tears. “Please - don’t listen to the shadows this time. The darkness lies-”

“ _And you don’t?_ You _dare_ pretend you haven’t chained me under _fifteen years_ of lies?” Rajo pushed to his feet, pain lancing through every joint, the storm scouring the inside of his ribs. “Why _shouldn't_ I listen to them?”

“Because-” began Link.

“Tell me the truth this time,” Rajo cut in, mind racing too fast to wait for Link to spin another excuse, another platitude. “The _real_ truth. Why am I here? _Why do you keep me?_ ”

“Because,” said Link again, gesturing helplessly. “A - a hero saves everyone.”

“Maybe I don’t _want_ a hero,” shouted Rajo, feeling his heart shredded between rage and despair. Not once in his life had Link allowed him to become anything more to him than a duty. A burden. A reminder of his past. No matter how good he tried to be. How hard he worked. How strong he grew or how many prizes he brought home. Nothing he did was ever enough. “Have you ever once asked what _I_ wanted?”

Link frowned in confusion, taking a single step forward. “But I have! Many times - you have a whole room full of your favorite things. You picked out nearly every plant in the garden. You - you picked the colors for Ma Idrea’s rug.”

Rajo roared in frustration, but Link only shook his head in bafflement, unable or unwilling to hear him. As always.

The storm boiled from his skin, sparking lightning as the shadows pressed ever closer. Link said something, his stupid little pale face empty and cold. Rajo howled his pain, letting the lightning fill his hands. The prickling warmth didn’t soothe him this time - not with Link’s cold blue eyes pinning him down. He sliced the air with his hand and a tangle of light flew from his fingers.

Link scrambled under it somehow, twisting and raising a bright something as the second rolled off his hands.

The lightning reversed course with a fizzling crack - he batted it away once - twice -

 

_**\- o - O - o -** _

 

Rajo woke with a splitting headache and the acrid taste of red potion on his tongue. His shoulder screamed at him when he tried to move, and he tried vainly to convince himself that pitching the ringleader over a fence into a hostel’s midden was worth the pain.

He stared at the shadowed ceiling with one eye - the other had swollen shut and half his head seemed to be bound up in some kind of crude bandage soaked in green-smelling goop. By the angle of the golden shards of light scattered over his star charts above, he judged it an hour or so after dawn. Clear, for once, despite the dreary season.

Rajo flexed fingers and toes experimentally, wincing at the lingering pain. Everything seemed more or less where it belonged, even if Link had wrapped him up in a hundred rupee worth of mistlinen and potions to make it so. Because of course he faithfully tended every duty to perfection, even the hateful ones. He felt sick with the weight of it all, but rolling over to retch would hurt. So he thrust against the nausea with every crumb of will he could muster, and endeavored not to think of anything.

Rajo had never been good at not thinking about things.

He wasn’t surprised to find a slops bowl already beside his bed, with a clean cloth hanging through the iron ring on his nightstand. Because _of course_ Link would tend his ungrateful, wicked, selfish ward with every appearance of perfect compassion.

Rajo lay on his side, looking out at his room and praying his stomach would settle again. He let his eyes wander, reminding himself of every book, every model, every decoration. Little of it was truly his in any way - even his best designs and researches drew heavily on the work of the unknown man who fell to the darkness before he was born. His uncle? Or his father?

Rajo couldn’t decide which he actually wanted it to be - or even which would hurt less. Anna thought he shouldn’t care so much about the right words to attach to a dead man, and maybe she was right about that part. She knew only the threadbare old lie of _‘Vohatyr the wandering carpenter and the foundling he adopted’_ , and to her, it was obvious Link had become his father in every way that mattered. Which wasn’t precisely _wrong_ \- but wasn’t quite _right_ either. She thought the best of everybody, and he couldn’t bring himself to tell her Link didn't  _want_ to be anyone's father, much less his.

Rajo frowned, irrationally irritated by the untidy heap of yesterday’s clothing in the middle of his desk. Link had shoved the little book of light hymns randomly on the shelf above and piled all the cipher notes on top like they didn’t matter. It didn’t make sense - he should have recognized the royal crest at once.

“There’s tea when you’re ready,” said Link from the door.

Rajo groaned, annoyed with himself for having dozed off enough to miss his approach. “Don’t want tea.”

“Too bad,” said Link, leaning hip and shoulder against the doorframe. “It’s good for you, and it’ll be a few hours before we stop for breakfast.”

“What are you ta-” began Rajo.

“Plans have changed,” cut in Link, his voice raw but unwavering. “Don’t worry about packing. I’ll take care of it later.”

“We can’t leave today,” said Rajo, pushing himself upright and grabbing the heavy bedcurtains for balance. “I have a project-”

“The ministers can wait for new locks, and the rich can wait on someone else to write them shadow books. That’s not important anymore,” said Link, shaking his head.

“Not those,” said Rajo, drawing a deep breath and meeting Link’s cold blue eyes. “Someone from the castle sent me a message about fairies. That’s why I was out so late yesterday, when the cowards followed me.”

“They can wait,” said Link, jaw set. He waited a moment, and when Rajo made no move to rise, he pushed away from the door and stalked closer, hand outstretched.

Rajo grasped his pale, unblemished hand in both of his bandaged ones. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. It was an accident. I should have walked away when the lightning came. I thought I could still control it.”

Link shook his head sadly, combing back a stray curl from Rajo’s forehead with his free hand. “The horses are waiting, and your tea is getting cold. If you want help getting ready, just say so.”

Which meant he wasn’t going to change his mind, and this would be just one more thing they never talked about.

“Yeah,” said Rajo, his chest tight. “Sure.”

 

_**\- o - O - o -** _

 

True to his word, Link didn’t pull off the road until nearly noon. But at least he’d packed a whole satchel of snacks. Creamy white cheese and baked apple preserves, tiny round charm loaves from the bakery and a whole bottle of spicy egg salad. The little two-wheeled cart moved along at a brisk pace, and was just barely long enough Rajo could lay down in it. If it’d had a canopy, or a third wheel to keep it from seesawing so readily, it would almost be pleasant.

Link helped him down from the cart without comment, gesturing for Rajo to tend the horses while he cooked a proper breakfast. He made more tea, and insisted Rajo choke down another dose of red potion, all without a word.

Rajo watched him in the silence, trying to remember when he’d last seen Link with that odd, hollow expression. It was something worse than cold, with a little sadness around the edges, but mostly it just made him strange. Like he’d become a moving statue, and his spirit had gone somewhere else entirely.

When Link touched his shoulder and gestured to the cart after they finished eating, it reminded him suddenly of the last fishing trip before they left the farm. Da Corfo taught them all how dangerous the lake could be when they were very little. Staying wet in the wind and cold could kill just as readily as the treacherous ice. Roan had been furious at Link's unfeeling rejection of everything that mattered to him - and he wasn't stupid. He knew it was all Rajo's fault. 

Rajo stood in a daze, pulling the bandages from his head and squinting against the light to see better with two eyes, though a disorienting red haze remained on the bad side. Link frowned at the goopey linen, but took the wadded mess anyway.

And then he remembered the morning after the fire, when he confessed about the dropping the bottle and losing the pink fairy. Link had looked hollow then too. He knew what Rajo didn't learn until a few years ago: fairies and light spirits possess healing magic powerful enough restore life to the dead. True life, not merely the uncanny semblance of it which demons command. 

“You’re _afraid_ for me,” said Rajo softly.

Link only shrugged, looking away.

“You didn’t turn right for the farm and there’s not enough in the cart to even cross the lowlands,” said Rajo, frowning down at him. “Where are we going?”

Link winced, fidgeting with the bandage cloth. “I don’t know. I was - hoping we could solve that together. Just the two of us.”

Rajo couldn’t find any words for that. The princess’ request lost all urgency for him, and the challenges of his other work seemed petty and purposeless now. He ruffled a hand through Link’s fair hair, and let the moment fill him.

 


	16. Chapter 16

The days passed in a strange kind of idyll, especially when the snow came. Unlike the muddy, frozen slush they saw in the city, snowfall on the plains drifted down from the heavens pure and fluffy - as if it strove to embody the most romantic idea of snow.

After a week of that weather, they traded the little cart and some fancy preserves to a farmer in exchange for a sled, complete with silverbell harness for the horses. The couple of banded blue chests Link had brought away from Castletown proved to hold plenty of winter woolens and hunting gear, a cozy tent, his cittern and extra strings - even Link’s spindle and a few painted ropes of combed wool.

Rajo regretted leaving his books behind, but maybe when they settled somewhere, they could write to Roan and he could bring them things. As long as they kept wandering though, it was enough to have the music to soothe the old silences between them. Some nights, Link even looked almost happy as they ate together beside the fire.

Rajo’s injuries healed, and no soldiers came coursing down the road after them. Link skirted the edges of old pine forests, into rolling wilderness full of elk and deer and foxes - they even heard a few wolves in the distance, but saw only tracks.

They traded at farms along the way - or rather, Link traded, and Rajo stayed with the sleigh. They avoided towns altogether by silent accord - but the third time Link changed course away from wide forested roads, Rajo asked why.

Link set his narrow jaw and didn’t say a word the rest of the day.

Rajo let him sulk, playing quiet songs that reminded him of the farm.

But when they stopped for the night he dreamed of war.

 

**_\- o - O - o -_ **

 

Rajo often dreamed of war, and worse things, but this dream was different. He stood apart in this dream, looking down at a land blackened and dying. The sky burned and the rivers curdled with blood. Whole villages lay in ruins, overgrown with leafless thornbriars, and still the armies clashed over hill and field. Banners rose and fell, and as he watched, the soldiers melted from one form to the next. Now Hylian, now Zora, now stalbones and now spectres.

Rajo watched every shape of mortal and immortal rise and fall under the burning sky. A distant and terrible god laughed, and from the heavens fell bolts of lightning into the roiling battle below. Red and blue and green lightning sparked and fizzled among the quicksilver fighters, and dragons rode the burning wind in endless violent knots.

Over and over the battle played out, and through it all the terrible voice laughed.

Usually in these dreams, Rajo was plunged into the battle with everyone else, or the battle was only beginning, or had already ended. And this time, not only did he _know_ he was dreaming, but he could move around of his own will to see different angles. He couldn’t leave the thorny grove he was in, but he could look closer at anything below merely by wishing he could, as if he had a magnificent magical telescope before him.

It was still terrible, but in a more distant way than he’d dreamed before. And for the first time, when he told the dream that was enough, that he wanted to wake up, he did.

 

**_-o - O - o -_ **

 

Rajo sat up carefully in the little tent, hunched over so his head wouldn’t push against the cloth. The vividness of the war dream lingered, but he could see the tent walls bright with moonlight, and feel the texture of familiar wool blankets, and the vaguely queasy sense that always attended waking suddenly.

Link whimpered in his sleep, wrapped tight in his own blankets with one hand clutching the ricasso of the naked sword beside him. Rajo didn’t remember him unsheathing it, so he must have stayed awake far later. There was an odd glistening shadow under his hand - when Rajo looked closer he saw Link’s grip had drifted just enough to catch the blade edge.

Even if he was wary of wild things or pursuing soldiers in the night, he shouldn’t have taken the blade from the scabbard. Rajo untangled himself so he could trap the rest of the blade under layers of blanket before he tried to move Link’s hand. Just in case.

Rajo touched him lightly, hesitating when the roar of battle swelled around him. Usually he didn’t catch more than distant howls of noise from so little. He’d eavesdropped on many of Link’s nightmares, mostly by accident when he was small. When Link was drunk, his dreams weren’t much worse than wave-sickness and noise, and Rajo didn’t feel much more than that unless he touched Link’s face. Which was dangerous, because even brushing his hair back usually woke him.

His nightmare must be very strong tonight. Rajo carefully took the sword away, returning it safely to its scabbard, though its absence made Link whimper again and frown, his pale face contorted with fear. Rajo restored the peace tie over the cross guard, and laid it down again where Link’s fingers would brush against the pommel.

But when Link groped for the hilt, he caught Rajo’s hand too, and harsh purple light bloomed around them with an acrid sort of fog.

 

**_\- o - O - o -_ **

 

Rajo turned his head as the tent vanished, debating whether he should pull away, or wake Link on purpose.

A legendary sheikah warrior advanced on them with menacing step, his red eyes sharp and unwavering. Chains of light and shadow draped over the sheikah like a fine shawl, and he held a bloody sword by its middle.

He thrust the dripping blade at Rajo, saying only, _You have no choice. If you believe the prophecies, you must do it._

Rajo shook his head, remembering the few things Link had confessed about the war. The gods were unbearably cruel to their champion, burdening him with dreadful commands and torturous memories.

“You’ve asked too much already,” said Rajo quietly. “His service is finished. Let him sleep.”

The sheikah did not answer, but vanished in a cloud of smoke that made him cough. Rain broke over them, driving back smoke and mist - but Rajo soon wished it didn't.

All too swiftly, the rain became blood pouring from grotesque mouths set into horrible froglike faces trapped in the slimy dark walls. Hands rose from the gore around them, pulling at the blankets, at their clothes, crying with many voices.

 _Blood and greed, blood and greed_ , they said.

 _Why didn't you save **me** _ they said.

Rajo lifted Link in his arms, blanket and all, and ran.

He wasn’t a child anymore. He had years of Temple lessons and the secrets of a dead man’s books to strengthen his Will. Wishing was still dangerous - but _all_ magic was dangerous, in the end.

If he could hammer his power against Link’s nightmare long enough, he might be able to force his mind onto better ground. Maybe not happy memories - but at least peaceful ones. Away from the cries of the damned that he couldn’t save, away from the weight of his perceived failures.

The storm whirled around them, and thunder shook the bones of the earth beneath. He let the hands tear his clothing, clutching Link’s shrinking body to his chest, and kept running. He recited the simplest of prayers to the Light as he barreled through the consuming corridors, around corners, climbing endless stairs, scrambling over broken stones.

At last they broke into the open, surrounded by the blessed wind of the storm and the patter of a softer rain. A Hylian woman with lapis eyes waited for him, draped in noon-white and primrose and the shining purple of fifty rupee gems.

“Princess,” said Rajo, bowing to her with the shivering child-form of Link’s nightmare self still wrapped in his arms. “Release your Champion - he served you faithfully but his mission is over. Mortal heroes have limits.”

She held out her hand, her eyes soft with compassion, but the ground split open and a great monster crawled out of the fissure between them. It bore the tusks and feet of a boar, the tail and teeth of a lion, and the horns of a ram. It stood upright like a human, eyes glowing with madness and pain as it raised a pair of strange shining weapons to the sky.

“That is _enough_ ,” shouted Rajo, turning his back to the demon-twisted creature. “Even if you will not permit him to be happy, for the love of Light, you _must_ let him rest.”

Below, the shapeshifting armies from his own dream battled across the blackened landscape. The sky burned exactly as it had for him, and again the wretched voice in the storm laughed.

Rajo frowned at the thornbriars on the far side of the dead fields, and the colossal living oak tree towering above them. The copper-edged leaves drifting down from its massive green canopy made it seem to be weeping, and he saw a faint green light shining at its foot.

Aside from the Princess and the demon's victim, the tree was the only truly living thing in sight. Hylians believed a powerful guardian spirit lived in exactly such a tree, deep in the Lost Woods. Legends said only a pure heart could thread the labyrinth of that wild forest to reach it, for it was guarded by legions of lesser spirits and trials devised in the ancient days before the goddesses divided the spirit world and the mortal one.

They _also_ said the guardian of the forest held a relic of immense power which could grant mortals infinite wealth. The forest consumed many souls who went into it seeking that wealth.

But Rajo knew the older stories, which said the first guardians of the sacred elements were appointed by the golden goddesses themselves, and also the other stories which said the wildwoods were sacred to Farore. _Wealth_ was a concern of Din and Nayru - Farore’s blessings were life and healing.

Rajo closed his eyes, and centered all his will on the memory of Idrea’s kitchen garden. He summoned the scent of berries ripening in the summer sun, and the soothing fragrance of flowering memoryleaf. He conjured the drowsy sound of honeybees getting drunk in the sage, and angelwings singing to one another under the squash vines.

Rajo opened his eyes to soft summer twilight, exactly as he remembered it, before the fire, before they had to leave for Hyrule. The blue milkweed danced merrily in a gentle breeze, and a few lazy young cuccoo wandered the pea gravel paths, hunting for a bedtime snack. He laid Link’s childlike dream-form on one of the wide benches under the apple trees, next to the blurry statue of Farore.

“Sleep _here_ ,” he said, smoothing the blankets over his fragile body the same way he would soothe Taedra or Malon when they were overtired. “Remember the farm. You loved the farm. Dream _here_ , in the garden, where the only trouble that can find you is the long wait for Ma Idrea’s next batch of pies.”

Link mumbled in his sleep, frowning, but did not wake - inside the dream or out of it.

 

_**\- o - O - o -** _

 

Rajo sat beside him a long time, his breath steaming in the cold. His mind raced, picking through the details of both dreams.

Link had never seemed troubled by the woods around the farm, but those weren’t wildwood like in the dreams. The forested roads Link avoided weren’t quite wild either, but this far from the capital there would begin to be pockets of wilderness within striking distance of those roads.

The **_Book of the Sands_** said walking in the spirit world required both a stone-steady will, and a heart fearless as the sun. Weakness in either would bar entry at best, leaving the seeker firmly mired in the concerns of the mundane, mortal world. It also warned of both guardians and ghosts, temptations and monsters.

Some were shaped by the gods, to guard mortals from touching powers too great for them to handle, to test seekers’ worthiness for the blessings in their care. Others arose later, born of mortal greed and fear and hatred, or sent by demons to corrupt the pathways and divert heroes and sages from their purpose.

Like Hylian legend, the writings of the ancient Geldo warned that a seeker could be trapped or injured in the spirit world, and their mortal body would wither and die as a consequence. Accordingly the book advised rites of purification, and honing the body through years of rigorous training before venturing into the sands to seek the guidance of the holy spirits there.

The book held up the terrible fates of those who surrendered to malicious influence or drew the attention of the guardians as warning - the Geldo believed greedy or hateful mortals lost in the spirit world would become stalfos, doomed to wander in eternal violence. Children who stumbled into the spirit world on the other hand, they believed would become mischievous stalkid, led to plague mortals with dangerous pranks by the cat-eared demon Murasa.

Hylians regarded all demons as enemies of Light, and therefore evil. The **_Book of Sands_** said nothing whatever of good or evil - the ancient Geldo were far more concerned with weakness and strength, virtue and selfishness, cleverness and foolishness. The book detailed proper offerings to please Murasa, who they honored as the patron of lost things and tangled thread. It also devoted many pages to prayers and sacrifices for their own goddess, the Lady of Sands.

Where Hylians believed their long ears better suited them to hear the gods, the ancient Geldo firmly held that they were direct descendants, and the King born to them every hundred years was the mortal avatar of Her consort.

The Lord of Storms.

 

_**\- o - O - o -** _

 

Rajo murmured a prayer to Din as dawn kissed the perfect white snow. He’d never once heard Link invoke the goddesses of wisdom or life, so it felt wrong somehow to consign him to their protection even if that was more of their province. But both Hylian and Geldo writings said Din’s fire sustained the passions of mortals, and Link would need her help to reach the farm in the dead of winter with only one horse to pull his sleigh.

He checked his wards one last time, satisfied they would guard the little camp against anything short of an army, and carefully tore a page from the tiny octavo journal he always carried.

 

> _Da -_   
>  _Sorry about the horse. There were footprints in the snow this morning, and I didn’t want the thief to get away._   
>  _In school I learned there was an old trade road to the west which could take us home towards the farm without having to circle back near the capital._   
>  _Think about it - I’ll catch up with you after I’ve taken care of things._   
>  _\- Jojo_

 

Rajo laid the note just inside the tent, weighed down by a single fat red apple, and cast a tiny little spell to persuade Link to stay abed until noon at least.

He apologized to the drowsy black carthorse, leading him well away from the camp before he dared mount. The poor thing wouldn’t be able to carry him far like this, but he only needed to reach the edge of the wildwood. If the gods smiled, he might even find the spirit road into the Lost Woods before nightfall.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T-4

There are three kinds of fog everyone knows. The most pleasant is the gentle, wispy haze common to early mornings or the fringes of soft summer showers. Clammy, clogging, soupy grayness of late fall and muddy springs however are what people usually think of when they speak of fog. More dangerous are the snow-fogs of winter, or the mistcloaks around the sudden hailstorms of early summer, or the deceptively thin blanketing mist that hides ankle-turning divots and axle-cracking rocks on dreary nights.

Diamond-dust, however, may be the most annoying. Rajo leaned against a burly beech tree beside a patch of gray maybe-sky, shaking thousands of tiny beads of ice from his muffler and turning the folds again. He slipped his mittens off in the shelter of his pockets so he could scrub his eyes clear for the next twist of the path.

At least he didn’t have to trudge through snow - though the damp soaked through his heavy trousers and began on his boots anyway. Everything about the wildwood pretended to be soft and lovely, but even a little more acquaintance discovered a thorn under every bloom.

Rajo stared at the sad little patch of maybe-sky just barely visible through this thinner bit of canopy, vainly trying to judge the hour. He was angry with himself for losing count of his steps, but he couldn’t be more than a few dozen off. It should be sunset or even twilight by now, but the grayishness above held all the same blurry brilliance as it had at noon.

Rajo ate another apple, core and all, and slipped his mittens back on. It felt wrong to be surrounded by this much green and still be so cold. But at least this deep in the forest, the wind moved very little - and _that_ mostly where the path divided.

Rajo wound his muffler tight and marched into the shadows again, expecting another hour or two of the weird bright diamond fog before the knotted, twisted branches opened up on another pitiful clearing. This time, however, the wind guided him through only two switchbacks and dumped him out in a huge open grove, sweltering as the rest of the woods had been frigid.

Rajo dropped to one knee, stripping off his mittens to feel the damp earth. Warm, and soft with good humus, fragrant as Idrea’s garden just before planting. He patted the soil back into place and waited for the wind to change again.

It didn’t. The air seemed to laze about the uncanny summer grove in a gentle loop, laughing at him.

Rajo coiled his muffler into a tight bundle around his mittens, stuffing it deeply into a pocket and buttoning it tight. The wall of trees defining the sloping grove were no different from the gnarled, tangled things lining the twisted path - but a ring of stumps presided in the clearing itself. A few were split and blackened from old lightning strikes, others splintered and jagged from the fall of their companions. Time and weather softened the rest, sloughing off shattered bark and draping pitted old wood with lush new growth.

“Damn,” said Rajo under his breath, unbuttoning his coat as he stood. He didn’t dare take it off, even though he was sweating miserably in the enchanted summer twilight.

He walked softly along the deer tracks woven between the stumps, careful not to disturb too much of the lush undergrowth, especially where anything bloomed. The usual winter noise had died away entirely - not a single bird gossiped in the branches. The twilight glittered on hundreds of silent gossamer wings drifting on the lazy breeze, but no crickets sang.

Spirits dwelled in such places - benevolent or capricious, mischievous or cruel, any of them could be dangerous.

But at the bottom of the clearing, past the still pond, a blue fairy meandered in aimless whorls where the ground dropped away into a shadowed ravine. Her light was dim and flickering, but he could never mistake the gentle bell-like song of those fluttering wings.

“Peace, little one,” he rumbled softly, weaving his way towards her. The muggy summer heat sapped his strength, but he knew better than to surrender to its temptations. “Did you lose your way back to your spring?”

The little fairy didn’t answer, but her flight sagged with mournful tones, and she turned away towards the ravine. If her spring lay somewhere at the bottom, perhaps it had gotten buried under deadfall or mudslides. If he could restore her power, or even if she was only a lesser fairy needing to refresh herself in pure waters, she might be able to answer some of his questions.

Rajo followed her down the wicked slope, slick with drifts of fallen leaves and broadleaf burrs. The leaves hid treacherous little wallows and tangled ironvine roots, and before he’d descended a dozen steps, the prolific safflinas and trailing sweet autumn clematis and strange glowing blooms died off entirely. Instead, the bottom of the ravine was full of darkest violet oleander and bittersweet, riotous thornapple and feathery hemlock.

The stench of rot grew stronger the deeper he went. Rajo wasn’t terribly surprised to find carnivorous deku baba in the shadows where the ravine cut away to the side of the massive, mushroom-dotted roots of an ancient fallen oak. He stripped off his coat at last, winding it around his left arm as a shield.

Somewhere in the mad dash through the gauntlet of hungry weeds and lurking mindless chu, he lost sight of the weak blue fairy. He debated turning back to look for her as he eased down another crooked jag in the ravine - but the twilight seemed brighter below, and she may have simply flown ahead.

Rajo nearly fell when a dead, gnarled root rose up directly under his feet.

“ **You-! Grasping, greedy, trespassing** **mortal,** ” boomed a strange voice in ancient high Hylian from the wide bottom of the ravine.

Rajo looked up - and up - and yet further up at the incredible towering oak before him. The trunk was wider than two village squares, and the knotty bark and colossal feeder roots seemed to form a bearded face the size of the castle gatehouse. A double handful of stubby, sickly branches straggled out from the bole, but the living canopy didn’t stretch out until somewhere above a hundred feet.

“I’m not here for money,” said Rajo, glancing around the guardian oak’s clearing for any hint of the sickly fairy. He noticed a hint of light and glimmer off to the right of the oak, but _that_ was an intense green somewhere between chartreuse and emerald.

“ **You cannot have it** ,” boomed the voice. “ **Vile thief! Deceiving interloper! Wicked, murderous usurper!** ”

“I said, I’m not after wealth. I have plenty,” said Rajo carefully. He picked his way through the rotting deadfall, studying the vast tree. “And I haven’t killed anything in your woods. Not on purpose anyway.”

“ **_Yet_ ** ,” grumbled the tree. “ **But** **_I_ ** **know the tireless evil in your wicked heart - hear me, infidel. All of the Light will stand against you and your vile curses.** ”

Rajo sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with his free hand. “I came looking for a way to _break_ a curse, Spirit, not cast one. So I missed a few prayers - it’s not like I can tell the hour here anyway.”

“ **Lies! You may be able to fool shortsighted mortals with your secret death curses,** ” said the tree spirit. “ **But** ** _I_** **see everything. I** ** _know_** **about your wicked sorcerous** **plots.** ”

Rajo frowned at the tree spirit, unsettled by the sight of death’s-head spiders creeping along deep furrows in the gray-brown bark. Vah Kamenus snarled similar things if he caught Rajo alone on one of his bad days. “If I cut back some of these weeds and spiderwebs, you’ll be able to get more sun. You’ll feel better in the sun.”

“ **Foul creature - you may** **_try_ ** **to trick me, but I have unraveled hundreds of generations of mortal attempts to defile the sacred places,** ” said the tree spirit.

“Whyever would I trick you?” Rajo reined in his temper and laid his hand over his heart, bowing. “Let’s try cutting out a few, and see if it helps. I bet the spiders itch.”

“ **At what heavy price? Your kind is forever deceitful and greedy,** ” grumbled the tree spirit.

“I seek only to learn, Spirit,” said Rajo in the same voice he would use with a nervous horse. “Also, I’m good at catching cankerworms and borers. If you let me climb, I can clear out the rotting acorns too. How long have you been ill?”

“ **Aha! I knew you would come hunting for it,** ” boomed the tree spirit. “ **But you shall never have it. Never! I have stood against demons before, and I will not give way before evil.** ”

Rajo tightened his jaw and fought to keep his breaths even and his hands open as he shrugged back into his coat in the sweltering summer heat. “I know how frustrating demons can be - but I have studied magic half my life. I know many hidden things. I can help you.”

“ **For a price-!** ” grumbled the tree spirit. “ **Always a price. Always grasping. Always greedy. I will not allow you to lay hands upon it!** ”

“Keep your treasure,” sighed Rajo. “I came to ask you about a dream. Well - really, it’s several dreams, and my father, and history and stuff. But mostly about the dream.”

“ **Ah, the prophecy** ,” rumbled the tree spirit. “ **I have suspected the destined events were beginning ever since that Hylian woman fled into my forest with her infant.** ”

Rajo folded his hands behind his back. “Do you remember why she sought your protection? How long ago she came? Or at least - what happened to them?”

“ **Oh, she died. The soldiers hurt her very badly** ,” said the tree spirit. “ **Her blood upset the forest children, but she didn’t live long enough to change. I keep her bones beside me, under the stone the children made.** ”

“And the child-?” Rajo asked, struggling to keep his voice even.

“ **He is part of the forest now,** ” said the the tree spirit. “ **But** **_you_ ** **\- you do not belong. I know you - vile thief! Deceiving interloper! Wicked, murderous usurper!** ”

“I am _not_ ,” growled Rajo, staring fixedly at the far wall of the ravine. He would _not_ lose his temper in the spirit realm.

“ **_Yet_ ** ,” grumbled the tree. “ **But** **_I_ ** **know the tireless evil in your wicked heart - hear me, infidel. All of the Light will stand against you and your vile curses.** ”

“Stupid old tree,” grumbled Rajo, striving to mimic the kind of stolid patience that came so easily to Corfo and Ensren. _They_ would never shout at a dotty old man, no matter how nasty he was.

 

 

**  
**_\- o - O - o -_  


 

 

Threading the labyrinth in reverse was easier - as long as he had to squint against the wind, he was headed the right way. Which proved to be a very good thing, since the summer heat followed him with every blistering step. Rajo stripped off his sweater and sweat-soaked tunic, bundling it all together and tying it to his belt with his muffler so he wouldn’t be tempted to set it down.

He didn’t see the blue fairy again - but he thought he heard her wings from time to time as he wrestled with his thoughts. The guardian tree spirit said many things - but how much of it was oracle, and how much was madness? The only thing he felt certain of was that the ancient tree was, in fact, dying.

But instead of nurturing a hundred saplings to follow him in guarding the sacred heart of the forest, or even raising up _one_ to transfer his power to when the oak died, the spirit refused to drop any seeds at all. He seemed just as determined to hold fast to the failing shell as he was to keep Rajo from discovering whatever holy artifact he guarded.

The noise of something large crashing through the undergrowth pulled him out of his meditations. He put his back to one of the twisted elms lining the path. The noise kept advancing - the forest distorted the growling sound of the creature, but it seemed disorderly and violent. Rajo picked up a fallen branch, holding his breath.

Link hacked through thornbriar and clematis, and stumbled into the open. He leaned on his pitted, sap-streaked sword for balance, his blue eyes wild and his breaths ragged and labored.

“Not again,” he rasped.

“You were supposed to go _home_ ,” said Rajo, horrified by Link’s shredded clothing and frostbitten fingers.

Link spat, heaving himself more or less upright and scrubbing his left sleeve across his mouth. His face was a mess of layered bruises and lacerations, his dull yellow hair matted with mud and dried gore. “ _Won’t_ let it happen again.”

“Of course not,” said Rajo, holding out his empty hand in a gesture of peace. Even deep in his cups, Link was never this bad. “The war is a long time ago now. Put the sword away.”

“No,” said Link, planting himself in the middle of the path. “Won’t let you win. Not again. Never again.”

“What are you-? No. Da, it’s _me_ ,” said Rajo, pushing away from the tree and calling a little ball of light so Link would be able to see better in the muggy woodland twilight.

Link howled a threadbare warcry and drew back his blade, turning his right side forward.

Rajo bit back a curse when he realized he didn’t move _that_ arm because it hung at the wrong angle, and under the odorous grime it was swollen and oozing. “Stop. You’ll only hurt yourself.”

Link cried out again, charging forward with a wild slash. Rajo deflected it with the branch twice, and on the third strike he was able to catch Link’s wrist with his off hand and disarm him.

“Enough,” said Rajo firmly.

Link howled, ramming his ruined shoulder into Rajo’s gut. “Never-!”

Rajo sighed, trapping the frail man in his arms. “It’s just a nightmare. You shouldn’t have come into the woods.”

“ _You’re_ the nightmare,” growled Link. “You - monstrous-”

“Shh,” said Rajo, trying vainly to comb his wild hair back. Horrific visions pushed against him, blood and fire and the unhallowed dead screaming in the shadows. “It’s over, hero. Time to go home.”

“Can’t,” said Link, shaking his head. “Ganondorf. Have to. Take it back.”

“Not like this you don’t,” said Rajo, lifting him up and settling his slight weight over one shoulder. He’d only been away a day and a half at most - but Link was thin as a corpse and rambling in violent delirium as if he’d been wandering the woods for weeks on end.

Which - maybe he had. The legends did say only the pure of heart could thread the wildwood labyrinth.

Rajo tried to hold his focus on the road ahead. But with every step, more of Link’s nightmares became his own. The sky burned, and a dark rider on a black horse thundered across the wasteland ahead of them, laughing.

 _Do you realize who you’re dealing with? I am Ganondorf - and soon I will rule the world_ , he boomed in a voice dark as night.

 _What have you done to our prince?_ said a woman behind him with a drillfield roughness sharpening her sorrow.

 _It is time to be a hero_ , said an eerily familiar young voice in the shadows.

 _If you believe the prophecy, you have no choice. You must do it,_ said a steel-sharp voice in perfect, courtly Hylian.

 _Today we start a new game,_ said his own voice - except it wasn’t him at all. He would never say anything so frivolous and strange. _You’re going to save the world, Link. But you have to follow all the rules._ _Do you promise?_

When the earth split open below him, he stumbled, and took a knee so he wouldn’t fall. A gout of black smoke and violet magic rose from the fissure, and lifted a dead man’s body from the darkness. His regal cloak hung in tatters and his armor was battered and bloody. His head lolled at an unnatural angle, and his throat had been slit. Weird yellow-green light shone where his eyes should have been, and his body arched back, his flesh rippling and distorting with sickening wet crunches.

Rajo bowed before the vision and emptied his guts on the road.

When he looked up again, the man was gone, but the monster remained. Exactly as he dreamed, the massive horned beast roared in pain and drew a pair of three-pronged daggers from the miasma.

 _Blood and greed, blood and greed_ , chanted a hundred bodiless voices in the storm.

 _Destroy him with the sacred sword_ , cried the princess.

The demon-twisted beast roared, tusks bright - but wrapped in that roar he heard a child’s desolate wail.

_Nonono. No mad! No more play monster! Be good be good - no eating Jojo - Jojo taste bad! Leggo leggo, no tell, our secret! No mad. Secret! Be good be good._

_Good? You? Never,_ said Link as he drew his sky-bright sword, but his voice broke as he said it. _It’s you, Ganondorf. It’s always you. And I will always be here to stop you._


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T - 3

Rajo leaned against the solid, sunwarmed boulder, and waited for his eyes to accept the unbelievable brilliance of noon. He felt disgusting, every thread of his winter clothing sweat-soaked and ruined. He offered a blasphemous prayer of thanks to Farore that the sleep spell had worked at last, and Link at least was insensible to the unseasonable heat.

Not that it mattered, really.

Rajo stared out at the gentle green hills, lush lowland farms and rich apple orchards, and tried to find a word for the tempest scouring the inside of his ribs. They were all right. Hyrule was a land of quiet beauty and orderly peace. Anyone could see that.

Rajo stripped down to shirt and trousers, mostly so he could feel the sun on his skin after the muggy twilight of the Woods. With every passing minute the afternoon grew even warmer, and Rajo didn’t look forward to the long walk ahead. The nearest village looked at least two days distant.

But before he could even get Link settled properly again, Farore smiled - or maybe Nayru laughed, for the faint tickle of bright harness bells and the clicky-creak of the Beedle wagon rode the languid summer breeze. Rajo left his bundled woolens behind and trudged toward the sound, quickening his step when he caught the nonsensical warbling song of the Beedle himself.

Another handful of breaths and the Beedle’s matched bays pulled around the sandstone boulders heaped at the bend in the road below. Rajo reached the verge and had already waved to the perennially cheerful merchant before he realized he didn’t have an actual plan.

Not that it mattered, really.

The Beedle choked on his idle melody and stood up on the driving box, crying; “Great good goddesses above preserve me-!”

“It’s ok,” called Rajo, sifting through shards of old memories for something to persuade him out of his fear. “I have money from Voh, just don’t tell Da.”

“Nayru’s grace, but I don’t believe it,” said the Beedle, hauling on the reins until his horses agreed to stop. “Am I dreaming or do I see Rajenaya all grown up? ”

“Maybe a little of both. Headed toward your western circuit?” Rajo forced a smile and slid Link down from his shoulder to carry him more gently the rest of the way to the wagon.

“Din’s mercy but you’re _enormous_ ,” said the Beedle in awe. With him standing in the wagon and Rajo beside it, their eyes were nearly on level. Most people hated that, but he wondered if people who traveled more or lived near the desert maybe got used to the idea of Gerudo height. Probably not though, since they were always raiding back and forth in border provinces. “Goddess bright. That braid of yours must be longer than I am tall. What _have_ they been feeding you in Hyrule and where can I buy it?”

Rajo laughed. “Didn’t you hear? Hyrule is the land of milk and honey. It’s candy for breakfast and cake for lunch, trifle for dinner and pie for dessert. Although personally I think the cake ought to be first.”

The Beedle clicked his tongue, still staring in disbelief. “Never imagined in a thousand years. Wow. I guess you grew into that magnificent nose after all. I bet the city girls are all mad for a dance with a marvel like you. What brings you all the way out - _Farore’s sweet song!_ What is _-_ ”

“Shh, it’s ok,” said Rajo, sharpening his will to a needle-fine point as the man realized what he carried. “We can make room in the wagon for him while the potion has time to work.”

“Oh sure, sure, plenty of room after the last stop,” stammered the Beedle, climbing down from the box, though his face had gone deathly pale. “It’s just - what did you say happened? I’ve never seen the boy so shattered. Voh I mean, always been strong as an ox and half as genial - I mean, a little joke, you see. No offense. When you were small, you see, I think I maybe heard a dozen words out of the man in a year.”

“I believe it,” said Rajo, and meant it. “You have blue elixirs on hand? I’ll take red if you don’t, but-”

“Oh - I have the blue,” said Beedle quickly, throwing back the bolt on the brightly painted wagon’s door. “But potion isn’t food, my boy. And that arm - no potion will fix that. He needs a proper healer - a Zora doctor if I’m any judge.”

“You aren’t going anywhere near Zoraland,” said Rajo.

“Right you are my boy. Why would I go east? I’ve been east,” said the Beedle, frowning with concern as he dug through his clever little cabinets. “The trouble with potions is they heal _almost_ everything. You get used to carrying around the answer, but then something falls different than you expected, and what do you do?”

Rajo shrugged, waiting for the man to find the right bottles and get out of his way.

“This might be - yes, this is it. May need to spend the rupee on that squid ink after all. I’ve been carrying this lot so long I can’t hardly read my own hand,” said the Beedle. “Anyhow. If you’ve _got_ potions, well, maybe you say _every_ problem is a potion sort of problem, and even if it isn’t, you try it anyway, because that’s what you’ve got. The trouble you see, is that potions _in_ _particular_ work so often and so well, that when they don’t-”

“Just give me the damn bottle,” said Rajo, laying the unconscious man into the floor of the wagon. “You’re worried he’s going to die and don’t want it to be on you. I get it. It’s ok.”

“But - _look_ at him Jojo,” whispered the Beedle.

“You’re right,” said Rajo, taking the dusty bottle and breaking the wax seal. “Potion _won’t_ fix everything. Lucky for him, I’m something of a witch - and witches make any brew work better. But after I’m done, you’re going to skip the west circuit and take him with you straight to the farm. Ma Idrea will know what to do from there.”

“Oh, my wagon is a wonderful little thing for sure, but I’m not sure we can fit two men and a giant all the way to-”

“Don’t worry so much,” said Rajo, cutting Link’s ruined shirt away. “I won't be riding with you, and you won’t miss the profit from a shorter circuit this year. Send to Roan to bring you the old blue chest from the house in Castletown. It holds all you’re owed and then some.”

“But,” said the Beedle, wringing his hands. “What _happened_ ? How did Voh manage to get _frostbite_ at _midsummer_ in the middle of Hyrule?”

Rajo didn’t look up from his work. “There was a demon.”

The Beedle stood in silence three times longer than he expected. “And?”

“Go water the horses,” said Rajo, slathering costly blue potion on clean white bandage.

The Beedle went.

 

 

 

**_\- o - O - o -_ **

 

 

By late afternoon, everything that could be cleaned or stitched or splinted had been, and Rajo crouched inside the crowded wagon to tuck Link securely into the little box-bed built into the forward wall. The sleep spell held - the man muttered blurry Geldo curses and cryptic fragments from his muffled dreams at times, but didn’t truly surface.

Rajo sat beside him for a long while, staring out the wagon door, mind strangely empty. He watched the wispy clouds drift above green hills. Songbirds gossiped as they hunted bugs and seeds at the verge of the road, and in the distance a hawk hunted mice above a millet field. The edge of the wildwood was just barely visible where the thinning trees straggled towards the road. A tidy orchard draped one of the far hills, and time-softened stones reflected the clear summer sunlight.

“Fear no more the lightning flash,” said Rajo into the silence, undoing the delicate silver clasp of one heavy topaz earring. “Nor dread the thunderstone - no blade of heaven nor hell may harm thee.”

Link did not stir when Rajo laid the pair of bright triangle ornaments in his bandaged left hand.

“Fear not slander, nor censure rash,” said Rajo, unwinding the trillion-studded wristlets and pouring his power into the measured formality of ancient high Hylian. “Fear no more the tyrant’s stroke.”

“Be light of heart,” he said, piling his many-stranded necklaces atop the rest.

Untangling the elaborate jeweled clasps and filigree silver chains so he could remove the Geldo-style hair ornament of rich imperial topaz on his own took rather more attention and fuss, but he managed.

“Be bright of eye,” he said, nestling the central stone in the middle of the pile.

The heap of silver and shining gems pulled motes of golden afternoon sunlight right into the cramped little wagon. Rajo spun his magic tighter as he watched them shimmer over the clean linens and painted wood.

“The dreadful burden be no longer thine,” he murmured, brushing his fingers over the sleeping man’s troubled brow.

Link’s muffled nightmares still stung, bitter as aconite, but he understood them at last. Piece by piece he removed the exotic enameled snake jewelry Link had made him wear the day they left Castletown. It didn’t seem right to mix them with the rest - so he draped them on Link. Their lively knots and green garnet eyes were far more suited to Link’s fair complexion anyway, even if the wristlets and pectoral were loose. He suspected they possessed some subtle foreign enchantment. It was a pity he wouldn’t be able to study their secrets, but Link’s insistence he wear them when they left Castletown was enough evidence to put them to use now.

If nothing else, they were surely worth a great deal of money.

Rajo emptied his pockets onto the tiny counter beside the box bed and stole a hooked pruning knife from the cabinet. The afternoon still shone bright, but a long road grows no shorter for delaying its measure. So Rajo closed his eyes and held his hand over Link’s chest to finish the incantation.

“No shadow shall harm thee, nor no witchcraft hereafter charm thee,” said Rajo, spinning every bit of his power into the spell, thick and graceless, but shields didn’t have to be pretty. They only needed to _work_. “Ghost unlaid forbear thee - nothing ill come near thee. By my will and by my blood, let this my desire bear the might of the oldest gods, that no work of man nor magic may break it.”

The seal locked into place, flaring bright upon the rough-faceted enchantment, and with a subtle harmonious hum of coiled potential it settled over Link’s form as a labyrinthine lacework of golden light.

Rajo withdrew, satisfied in his work, though the beginnings of a punishing headache lanced up through his jaw and made his ear throb with the sudden pressure. He decided not to bother with any green potion though. A little walk in the sunlight should replenish enough of his magic to ensure the charm endured.

The Beedle hailed him as he stepped down from the wagon, offering a share of his mushroom rice cakes. “Turns out to be good fortune you waved us down when you did. Adil had apparently managed to pick up a stone, but we got out before it could work too deep.”

“Good,” said Rajo. He leaned against the wagon to eat, pleasantly surprised the man’s cooking proved to be not only competent but actually delicious. That, or he was famished. Or maybe both. “I’ll see what I can do to make her road easier while the bruise heals, and put a little charm on both your girls to guard against any more - these provincial roads aren’t in the best repair.”

“Sadly true,” said the Beedle, pouring plain tea for both of them. “Not that it’s a holiday to sink the wheels in mud either, but halfway measures are almost worse than none at all.”

Rajo agreed, sharing what he knew of the chancellor’s proposals for ‘domestic improvements’ in the coming decade, and the dour Lord Marshall’s opinion of the same.

“Well, which voice do you think he’ll prefer? As I’ve heard it, the High King prefers the counsel of His Own Majesty above anyone,” said the Beedle with a disingenuous air.

Rajo shrugged. “Whichever best persuades him their way will strengthen Hyrule. As it should be.”

The Beedle raised a brow. “Curious words to hear from the very soul of mischief. All that book learning turn you into a straitlaced royalist, my boy?”

Rajo laughed, nestling his empty tea mug back into the lunch basket. “Pragmatist. Without power behind their commands, Kings are just men in fancy hats.”

“Now _that_ is the irreverent Rajenaya I used to know,” said the Beedle, draining his own mug. “Hope you’re not planning to walk the whole way to the farm in those city boots of yours.”

“Hn. I’m not that stupid,” said Rajo lightly. “Didn’t you pay attention to your wondertales? Why would a witch walk anywhere, when they could fly about on a magic broom?”

“Sure, sure. I could maybe see that for a canny little grandmotherly witch,” mused the Beedle, eyeing him critically. “But for a young man as tall as a house?”

Rajo laughed. “Don’t worry about me. Anyway, you should be able to make good time tonight even allowing Adil an easy pace.”

The Beedle nodded, tucking away the lunch basket and taking up the reins with a hesitant manner. “So,” he said.

Rajo offered him a wry grin and slapped the side of the wagon lightly. “Everything will be fine. You’ll see.”

 

**_\- o - O - o -_ **

 

The wind over the chasm circled in gentle whorls, tempering the heat of a muggy summer evening. The sweet fragrance of moonflower and tuberose and wisteria carried across the swaying footbridge, and lush vines draped fetchingly over the anchors and cables, partially veiling the passageway in the steep sandstone cliff on the far side.

A small green-haired child dressed in the colors of the forest stood just above the sloping middle of the narrow bridge, surrounded by a shimmering kaleidoscope of butterflies. One of them seemed to glow with its own soft green light - but the silver moon peeked through the trees and touched everything with magic.

Ganondorf strode fearlessly down the rough planks, looking neither left nor right. His long red braid hung damp and heavy down his broad back, brushing the top of his riding boots with every step. His plain, dark woolen clothing swallowed the moonlight, giving nothing back.

“You can’t come here,” said the child.

“Don’t fear, little girl,” said Ganondorf with a wry grin. He toyed with a small hooked blade in his right hand, golden eyes bright.

“You don’t belong here,” said the girl child, stomping her tiny foot on the plank decking and making the whole bridge shiver.

“Hn,” said Ganondorf, pausing at the center of the bridge. He pulled his braid over his shoulder and raised the little knife to the nape of his neck. In one sharp motion he sliced through the entire thick plait.

He turned slowly, golden eyes meandering over the landscape. The girl yelled insults, refusing him entry to her forest.

Ganondorf only stared at the chasm in silence, pruning knife in his right fist, severed braid in his left.

“I won’t be staying,” he said at last, when the girl ran out of words to hurl at him.

The angry child frowned, tilting her head to one side in confusion. She stomped her tiny foot again with a little warning growl, but Ganondorf ignored her. He dropped the knife into the chasm and tied the severed braid onot the thick support cable.

The soft call of night birds and courting crickets filled the silence above the empty bridge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would apologize to the Bard, except I'm not all that sorry, and anyways I think he might be amused.


End file.
